Are You a Biker or a Low Mileage User?

[BarneyGPz]

I have created an e-petition for everyone to consider

Please click the link & sign if you agree

(Note : the last date in the description should read Dec2014)

 

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/52999

 

Thanks In Advance

 

Andy (Barney)

[niceyellow vrs]

So you'd be happy for small companies, like the one I work for who have to have a reasonable fleet of vehicles doing a lot of miles every year, go out of business due to whopping fuel bills?

[Ootohere]

To me the system of Fuel and duty is that you already pay for how much you travel.

If you have an economic car/vehicle which is usually less polluting you are usually  paying less duty for the miles you do.

But you still want money for the country from those Paying ZERO Road tax and not using the vehicle much.

 

Lets get the Road Tax/Duty set by the weight of the vehicle.  

Cars/vehicles proper Gross weight not Unladen.  And not the Manufacturers Weights,

put on a Weigh Bridge @ First Registration and at MOT Tests.

 

Then no Taxing on age of  the car/vehicle, ie pre 2002,  high emission but tax set 'the old days data', emissions etc,

and forget these £0- low Road Taxes for these buying new cars but that never have the LOw Emissions or good economy the Manufacturers give by them using Stop/Start etc and fiddling the figures to sell those type of cars. .

 

Then have the money raised by taxing cars & other vehicles spent on roads and infrastructure for the roads and traffic. 

 

george

[briskycat]

As far as I know, the US and China don't have road tax and use the proposed scheme: ~15 and ~20 percent (respectively) of fuel price is the corresponding Fuel Duty.

[sheldon_cz]

I disapprove for various reasons:

a) Lack of alternatives

People need to go places, and unless viable alternatives are in place, no tax whatsoever is going to fix anything (unless you just want to increase the influx to the treasury). I am from the Czech Republic, and using a car for 2 people is less expensive than ANY sort of public transportation (unless you're going between major cities where there is a lot of competition in public transport), let alone about up to 100% faster. I can imagine the situation in Britain being similar.

b ) It is more ecological to keep an old car running than to scrap it and build a new one.

Building a new car with 10 more MPGs requires more energy and resources than your lower MPG car is ever going to produce. Even the Green Party says so.

c) This tax falls most heavily on the less well situated, because they can't afford economical/ecological cars.

It's them who use old cars because that's all they can afford. You don't want to put more tax burden on the lower classes, that hurts the economy, the society, and IMHO is just wrong. Let alone the fact that if you take mobility from them, maintaining a job gets much, much harder (first hand experience). The rich folks with Lamborghinis will get it licensed as a taxi cab (dozens of cases in London) or get a certificate as a disabled person (hundreds of cases in the Czech Republic).

d) A failed example in the Czech Republic

We have an example of this 'ecological' tax. There is a one on selling used, unecological cars (less than Euro 3 rating, incl.) of CZK 10 000 (about GBP 300) the first time it gets sold. However, for the law not to be so "inconsiderate", there's an exemption for disabled people, so that if one of the parties is disabled, no tax needs to be paid. You guessed it, now we have a thriving "black market with disabled people" for selling used cars to avoid that tax.

e) Vehicular traffic isn't even the main pollutant of the atmosphere

I couldn't get data for the UK, but if you look at the Czech Republic, trasportation isn't the main pollutant in ANY of the measured particles: http://issar.cenia.cz/issar/core/objects/generate_graph.php?id_document=1834&id_object=Graf_4 . Yes, it makes up a sizeable chunk of NOx, but that can't be solved by simply taxing unecological cars.

I hope I've presented enough evidence that this is really not the way to go, thank you.

Edited 27 July, 2013 by sheldon_cz

[James I]

Sorry, when doing 40,000 miles per year I won't signing your petition. Just to clarify we also have a Fabia that does 3,000 miles per and probably loses more petrol through evaporation than use, so with road tax at £125 on the Fabia and £175 on the Yeti I think we have a balance. 

 If your petition were to suggest a simple scrapping of the tax disc I would sign it simply because we get hammered for tax on fuel as it is.

 

 I expect a few taxi lads will also disagree with your petition.

[sparks03]

Or how about we stop trying to f*ck around with the same old, same old and push the development of FCV and hybrid drive-trains?  Now THAT would be something worth lobbying the government over. 

[James I]

Hybrids, I find rather ludicrous, you can have a 4 litre V8 and a milk float motor, the motor works up to 30 mph and then you murder the planet with a V8 that has all the extra work of lugging lots of batteries around that also cost the environment a lot to produce.

 

 How about technology moves on and we find low emission efficient cars, for example, the latest Golf GTD, euro 6 compliant, 184 BHP with 109 g/km CO2, it claims 60 MPG+ so we all know this is a little exaggerated but still very good. Even when fossil fuels run out, technology is there for bio fuels and even hydrogen cars.

 

 There will never be on answer, but as people stop smoking and cars become more efficient the government will be looking for new revenue streams, window tax maybe?

[Clunkclick]

It might be all bad . . .

 

If we assume that petrol companies are already pricing up to the maximum price they can get away with without reducing overall demand (They wouldn't marginal price nowadays, would they ?  )  then a conversion of road tax into fuel duty would reduce the overall costs of transport fleet operations i.e. the Government Tax would "steal" part of the excess profit currently taken by the oil companies, triste !

 

It might not be all bad for oil comapnies in terms of cash flow as they might be able to set the additional  fuel tax collected against their other tax liabilities.

 

Food for thought.

 

Nick

Edited 27 July, 2013 by Clunkclick

[sparks03]

Hybrids, I find rather ludicrous, you can have a 4 litre V8 and a milk float motor, the motor works up to 30 mph and then you murder the planet with a V8 that has all the extra work of lugging lots of batteries around that also cost the environment a lot to produce.

How about technology moves on and we find low emission efficient cars, for example, the latest Golf GTD, euro 6 compliant, 184 BHP with 109 g/km CO2, it claims 60 MPG+ so we all know this is a little exaggerated but still very good. Even when fossil fuels run out, technology is there for bio fuels and even hydrogen cars.

There will never be on answer, but as people stop smoking and cars become more efficient the government will be looking for new revenue streams, window tax maybe?

I was thinking more XL1 than RX/GS

[sheldon_cz]

There's a study (I forgot the name and aren't really keen on an hour of googling unless you guys really request it) that says that a fully electric car, even when powered strictly by coal-produced electric power, produces only 40% of total environmental pollution of a very economical diesel car (60 MPG or so). That includes energy and resources for making and disposing of 2 sets of lithium batteries, and most of that resources is actually aluminium and water (lithium makes up only a tiny fraction of a percent of the battery's mass).

I don't like saying that, but if that study is true, it makes no sense tinkering with hybrids as we know them and go fully electric or diesel-electric.

[Ootohere]

We are producing or can more power from Wind Turbines than is being used and we are building more and more Wind Farms.

Solar Power, Hydro, Nuclear etc.

 

We are also going to Wave power,

the Cost and ease of Producing Electricity

& then the selling prices is nothing to do with 'Real production Costs'.

 

Government put Tax Reliefs/money/imcentives into R&D and new technology to provide work, money and big profits for investors.

Nothing to do with more money in the pocket of the normal working and traveling person other than the wage.

 

There is no Holistic Policy on Transport in any Country and certainly not in Europe, 

just those with the most money worrying that plebs might do OK and not be kept in place by having to pay a high percentage of their income on Energy & Transport.

 

There is enough Oil & Minerals in the world for providing Manufacturing & Lubrication,

modern science & technology does not require us to use it anymore or in the future for Propulsion of Humans just for their transportation.

 

george