Is it possible to write about motoring taxes without coming across like white van man or a Clarksonite right-wing boor? I consider myself part of the muesli-eating, Guardian-reading carrier bag-recyling liberal set but I’m up for a challenge, so lets find out.
So Gordon Brown, in his wisdom, wants to increase road tax – or vehicle tax, to give it its proper name – on the most polluting cars. Nothing wrong with that. I’m in favour of this sort of thing.
What doesn’t seem especially well thought-out is that the policy applies retrospectively to all new cars registered since 2001. In other words, if you bought a car at any time since then, the government expects you to have had the foresight to realise this policy would be introduced in April 2008. In anticipation of this yet-to-be created policy, they seem to think, you would select a less-polluting car in anticipation. As I say, it’s not especially well thought-out.
As you might expect, there is a declaration to be made about my own car, which I bought last year and is five years old. Currently it costs £210 to tax, whereas next April that will increase to £300. That’s a 30% increase, which I had absolutely no way of anticipating when buying the car, however green I might have wanted to be.
The government’s argument is that we should encouarge less carbon emissions, and higher road taxes on higher polluting vehicles are one way of doing it. I agree. But, as a car buyer, you can only respond to the increased tax and buy a less polluting car if you know what the tax rate is. And, of course, no one buying a car between 2001 and early 2008 did.
So what am I supposed to do? Go and sell my car and replace it with another one with less emissions in order to save paying the higher tax? Maybe, but then the carbon creation involved in producing a new car is higher than the lifetime emissions from any car currently on the road. Shouldn’t people driving older cars be rewarded for keeping them on the road, rather than contributing to the carbon mountain involved in building new ones? As a so-called green tax, it’s about as effective as setting fire to the Springfield tyre mountain and attempting to extinguish it with molten lead.
This is a tax that offends virtually everyone: the motoring/white van/Clarkson lot; working mums driving slightly ageing people carriers on the school run; younger and older people driving cheaper second hand cars; and, of course, the green lobby. It’s got “10p tax rate fiasco” written all over it, since people aren’t necessarily thinking about it now but certainly will be next April when they come to tax their cars.
Unfortunately for me, David Cameron made exactly this point in Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, which , despite my best efforts, must mean I am a Tory. Damn.
The Conversation {5 comments}
This retrospective tax is possibly the worst idea I’ve ever heard of. How it qualifies as a green tax I’m not sure, as the very idea of a green tax is surely one that dissuades people from following a certain course of action: buying a new and polluting car for example.
The real issue here is that it will have the effect of convincing people that all green taxes are simply a swindle. That’s what’s annoying – there’s a logical and moral case for increasing road tax on new vehicles, and (debatably) maintaining above-inflation increases in fuel duty. There’s no such case for retrospective VED.
If Brown doesn’t drop it he’ll be finished. In itself it’s a stupid tax, along with everything else it’s the straw that broke the camel’s back. If he does drop it he’ll look weak and confused. Motorists, reminded by the increasingly strong and slightly sinister car lobby, will abandon labour for a decade. Great move, Gordon.
By the way, where’s this new cars-more-polluting-than-old-cars come from?
A good point well made but can I ask one thing? Is your plastic bag recycling to off-set the fact that you chose to buy one of the biggest and thus less economical engines in the range?
Out of touch politicians are using the myth of Global warming as a cover for huge tax increases. Let’s face it, if they were serious about carbon footprints there would be a solar panel on each new house and there would be a tax on new born babies, since they will all have a footprint of their own.
It’s all just a swindle. Clean air yes but you don’t need to use the public, usually the poorest, to pay for other government expenditure. Wake up & wise up.
Very bad idea to increase road tax! Aren’t we paying enough nowadays to the gov?
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