Road Tax

Ewan said:

I'm not quite sure why, but I've just placed an offer on a rare RHD 1972 Peugeot 304 Cabriolet. Zero road tax and no need for an MOT. Should help to average out the others somewhat.

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There is one of those for sale just round the corner, I went and had a look and was so tempted but then saw the Fulvia the owner had in his garage which reminded me of what I really want

rockits said:

I don't agree with the current car tax structure but have had the discussion & made my thoughts known many many times. It is what it is...I can't change it.....whatever.

I'm OK with consistency & logic but neither of those exist with car tax. Even the company car tax structure is fundamentally flawed & not thought through

I am looking from and end user view point though. Of course from the govt side it makes total sense!

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I think the new tax rules, one price band (well 3) suits all are a step in the right direction, it used to be the road fund licence, what has what comes out the back got to do with it? If you use the roads you pay, why should I pay 4 or 5 times more tax to use the roads 3-4 days a year over someone who covers 100K + miles, because they drive a plug in Hybrid....Which if you don't plug in is just a normal oil burner anyway, or one of these really clean VAG diesels that you can Tax for 30 quid....no nasty's coming out the back of this...honest!

Maybe a sensible way would to have a single basic charge £150 or so as a road fund.....and actually use it for the roads. Then if necessary (sensible) Co2 penalty bands to pay our dues to Europe. If you drive a big V8 you already pay your dues at the pump!

I agree we are all responsible for reducing our Co2 output, but fact is the roads still need maintaining, what happens if/when we all switch to alternative power? The government are going to accept zero income from the motorist? ...especially if the list price of our chosen alternative is less than 40K.....Smart meters, tax car charging.......That's a whole other conspiracy theory for another day!

Well this QP owner certainly agrees with Crofty. I do about 2,000 miles a year in it. I would love to pay a £100 - £150 flat charge and then a pay per mile charge on top of that - the easiest being levying it on petrol.

But also speaking as the owner of a 5 metre long car, I hate to say this, but I think some sort of formula accounting for size needs to be introduced. A massive big hybrid takes up an awful lot of kerb space, an awful lot of road space. At the moment there is no incentive for cars to get smaller, they keep getting bigger - the current Polo is larger than the 1976 Golf.

Fat cars are blocking our roads like cholesterol in arteries. Our choices are: (1) ban all parking on public roads - not likely to be popular; (2) Compulsory purchase gardens and fields and widen every road in the country - not likely to be popular either, and unimaginably expensive; or (3) buy smaller cars - people won't do this without incentive.

I don’t mind paying it, if I could see something for it, there is no development in transport links in North East and its killing investment.. look at a map, draw a line from Blackpool to Hull, 2 motorways, one in West, one in east, nothing across. Road repairs are farmed out to cheapest provider, who need to turn a profit, therefore the repairs last one winter, next time same whole is 10x the size....yeah I know, rant,rant, had a bad day.....lol...

You know my thoughts but I'll jump on the band wagon! It all stinks and has no logic, structure or sense whatsoever. Why should it? Crazy idea! That would be far too logical wouldn't it. Why have a plan that generates revenues directly from the people/things that use it....then use these revenues to pay for the costs to run this infrastructure. How simple.....how effective....how never going to happen!!

TridentTested said:

Well this QP owner certainly agrees with Crofty. I do about 2,000 miles a year in it. I would love to pay a £100 - £150 flat charge and then a pay per mile charge on top of that - the easiest being levying it on petrol.

But also speaking as the owner of a 5 metre long car, I hate to say this, but I think some sort of formula accounting for size needs to be introduced. A massive big hybrid takes up an awful lot of kerb space, an awful lot of road space. At the moment there is no incentive for cars to get smaller, they keep getting bigger - the current Polo is larger than the 1976 Golf.

Fat cars are blocking our roads like cholesterol in arteries. Our choices are: (1) ban all parking on public roads - not likely to be popular; (2) Compulsory purchase gardens and fields and widen every road in the country - not likely to be popular either, and unimaginably expensive; or (3) buy smaller cars - people won't do this without incentive.

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I agree with you & Crofty however size isn't really the issue. Or more specifically to remove big cars and replace with small ones as that won't achieve much when you still have tons of buses, lorries and vans in the numbers that they exist.

Interesting to hear on that AI program last night that out of all motor vehicles only 3% are ever driving at at one time and 97% are parked.

rockits said:

Interesting to hear on that AI program last night that out of all motor vehicles only 3% are ever driving at at one time and 97% are parked.

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Id be happy to call BS on that number right there...!
Statistics can be very misleading frankly...

I dont do rush hour traffic anymore, hallelujah....And that's because you cant effing move on UK roads !

TimR said:

Id be happy to call BS on that number right there...!
Statistics can be very misleading frankly...

I dont do rush hour traffic anymore, hallelujah....And that's because you cant effing move on UK roads !

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It wouldn't surprise me although I think the real world UK stat was something like cars were used 5% of the time and parked for 95%.

I have just worked out back of envelope working that mine & wife's use is car use of 0.5-1% over a year. The cars are parked the rest of the time.

Not sure we are contributing to traffic pollution or density too much! Although we probably pay one of the highest levels of car tax....go figure!!

Work it out....you will be surprised.

Even if you use a very simple working on one car. There is 24 hours in a day x 78 days. Say to travel to work 1 hour and back 1 hour then use it at the weekends 1 hour per day that is a total of 12 hours use in a week. The week is 168 hours so that is about 6% use. If you have 2 cars and only use one mainly during the week then the weekend car at the weekend then give or take that is halved to 3% use.

Some will be more and some will be less but those stats seem pretty accurate to me. Most of the time a vehicle is sitting there doing nothing.

And just to split hairs...unless it is garaged or in some other way, "off the highway"...parked is right. Not a part of the traffic/congestion issue..not so much !

Britain- Slowest Common Denominator !

Exactly...spin the numbers and present...It doesnt change the fact that they are numbers..
Double it by removing night time figures....
When does it matter...? When we need to get from A-B..When is this...? During rush hours.
What proportion of registered vehicles use the highway at any given time...as a maximum number...?
Why does that number have relevance to the largest user group on a regular basis ?

Britain- Slowest Common Denominator !

I don't follow your logic I'm afraid. Does the whole of Britain sleep at night? No so why remove night time figures.

All I was saying is that vehicles are not used that much and parked most of the time. Also parked does indirectly increase traffic as parking on the road accounts for a portion of this. This is public highway that could be used for traffic flow and not parking. Just by more efficient use of vehicles full stop we can increase traffic flow and reduce congestion.

We just aren't being creative enough or clever enough with our thinking. A massive waste of resources to mine, manufacturer, ship, store and then hardly use the vehicles we are producing. Hardly efficient use of our resources from start to finish. Laughable really.

You are getting confused...You should follow my logic, despite making a generous swipe at the statistical manipulation of nightime driving numbers...!
You said 3% of registered vehicles in use at any one time....
then you go on to show that "on average" , vehicles are used only 3% of the time...Its not the same thing...
Its not interesting...! Its just a somewhat meaningless number...!

Both stats indeed mean different things. Either way neither make good reading do they? Both are displaying massive inefficiencies that could be improved dramatically. I'm not sure either or meaningless though are they? I would say that both stats mean quite a bit.

So most cars get used for about 3 months and are then scrapped?

New price from April. Going up from £695 to £735.

Gazcw said:

New price from April. Going up from £695 to £735.

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Yeah, it's bollox, innit.

Some quick maths tells me there's no sense in un-SORNing any earlier than 1 April just to dodge the price hike.

Felonious Crud said:

Yeah, it's bollox, innit.

Some quick maths tells me there's no sense in un-SORNing any earlier than 1 April just to dodge the price hike.

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I did that last year. It was cheaper to unSORN in March than April as the price hike was more than a month’s charge so March was essentially free. Not so this year.

The levels of tax are all getting a little bit silly now. Surely all the myriad or price increases in so many places the last few years must have an impact on inflation. Which will only add more pressure on inflation. I don't think we have runaway inflation just yet but if we aren't careful it might not be far away.

On a per mile rate it's certainly becoming a bit mad!