The VED or "Car Tax" as it's often known is a bit of a mess and keeps getting fiddled around with. (See attachments)

Surely there has to be a better way than the current way of doing it?

I was thinking about this earlier, and came up with a rough idea which should be sustainable and fair.

VED based on the following:

1) A charge for the energy used in vehicle manufacture  - 100% of charge in year of registration, reducing by 10% every year thereafter until 0% charge after 10 years.

2) A charge based on energy used for driving – So a a direct link between the energy used used on a mixed driving cycle over a standard distance, and the tax applied. This would cover petrol, diesel, electric, whatever.

3) A rebate based on efficiency – A negative offset to 2), to reward more efficient vehicles and encourage improvements in technology.

4) A charge based on pollution – A link between the harmful gases & particulates produced by the vehicle and tax applied. (Probably overkill to add brake and tire debris in here.) Note: I'm not convinced CO2 is a harmful gas, so I'd want to limit any charge related to CO2.

5) A charge based on recycling effort – An offset charge. Positive to charge extra for vehicles that contain materials that are expensive or difficult to recycle/dispose of. Negative for vehicles which are cheaper & easier to recycle.

 

I haven't suggested any numbers for most of these various charges, or even percentages to the offsets, but the manufacturing charge seems reasonable to encourage cars to be kept running for as long as possible, though balanced against the benefits of newer, more efficient and less polluting vehicles.

I had a hard time finding energy usage numbers for cars, which is important to level the playing field for gas/derv/hybrid/electric.

Any thoughts? 

Have I overlooked something?

 

 

Edited 17 August, 20205 yr by EnterName

Complicated to the point of being very impractical to calculate fairly and implement, unfortunately.

 

Energy usage numbers are directly proportional to CO2 production for IC-engined cars, which is one of the reasons that is currently used.

For electric cars it should be easy to measure as Watt hours per unit distance travelled.

Have the Tax & Duty on the fuels as they do now.

Then also take a daily charge according to the the weight / length of the vehicle and that covers those parked up and only used occasionally on the roads if the APR system in the UK is not to be sorted out in villages / towns / cities and on the roads into and out of these to know what vehicles are actually using the roads.

3 hours ago, Wino said:

Complicated to the point of being very impractical to calculate fairly and implement, unfortunately.

 

Energy usage numbers are directly proportional to CO2 production for IC-engined cars, which is one of the reasons that is currently used.

For electric cars it should be easy to measure as Watt hours per unit distance travelled.

Working out the numbers is the complicated bit because I was hoping to come up with something that could be retrospectively implemented and still be fair. I don't want to have to "frig" the system to get sensible numbers.

2 hours ago, e-Roottoot said:

Have the Tax & Duty on the fuels as they do now.

Then also take a daily charge according to the the weight / length of the vehicle and that covers those parked up and only used occasionally on the roads if the APR system in the UK is not to be sorted out in villages / towns / cities and on the roads into and out of these to know what vehicles are actually using the roads.

I'm open to all ideas, TBH. I agree with the principle that simply owning a polluting car shouldn't incur a heavy penalty. Driving it a lot and creating the pollution is the problem.

Maybe a flat pollution allowance be given to every car, and then once you exceed your allowance, the cost ramps up?

The goal of this would be to force people who use their cars a lot, into efficient low-pollution vehicles.

 

Not sure what to do about commercial vehicles though, not really considered that.

Edited 20 August, 20205 yr by EnterName

Simplest to me would be a yearly rate based on weight and then slap the rest on the energy side of things so on fuel or electricity to charge.  That way the bigger heavier polluting cars get hit more than something light and efficient and likewise those that use more 'fuel'.

 

I get caught currently as I pay more tax on my old mx5 that is lightweight, relatively efficient and does bugger all miles a year than others that have big heavy polluting cars.  My Suzuki is also in a higher band than my mum's jazz even though it is less polluting and lighter weight than the jazz...   Go figure...

Edited 20 August, 20205 yr by skomaz

Since April 2017 the new taxation system has become very silly. For example my 1,660kg Superb has an official co2 level of 161gm/km and is supposed to average 39.8mpg on the old NEDC testing scheme. It actually averages 39.5mpg so quite close suggesting co2 near to the 161gm on my V5C form. The wife's Karoq which produces over 200bhp less and weighs 300kg less has an official 126gm/km (NEDC) but despite it should average 51mpg due to the many short journeys it does the reality is more like 45mpg making the actual co2/km figure more than 10% higher at around 139gm/km. When I bought both cars in 2018 and 2019 the VED on both was £145 but will increase to £150 for the next 12 months.

23 minutes ago, shyVRS245 said:

Since April 2017 the new taxation system has become very silly. For example my 1,660kg Superb has an official co2 level of 161gm/km and is supposed to average 39.8mpg on the old NEDC testing scheme. It actually averages 39.5mpg so quite close suggesting co2 near to the 161gm on my V5C form. The wife's Karoq which produces over 200bhp less and weighs 300kg less has an official 126gm/km (NEDC) but despite it should average 51mpg due to the many short journeys it does the reality is more like 45mpg making the actual co2/km figure more than 10% higher at around 139gm/km. When I bought both cars in 2018 and 2019 the VED on both was £145 but will increase to £150 for the next 12 months.

 

And in comparison I pay £140 for the swift which weight 925kg and has a co2 figure of 97g/km and is averaging 50.2 mpg round town...

 

Just how does any of that stack up - it's nonsense ATM...

Currently I pay a total of £50 VED for our 2 cars (£20 for a 2008 Citroen C1 109g/km and £30 for a 2015 Octavia 1.4TSI 119g/km), in October I'm scrapping the C1 and getting a new Toyota Aygo which has lower emissions (99g/km) but the VED will be £135 the first year and £150 subsequent years so our VED bill will rise to £165 then £180.

 

Hardly an incentive to buy less polluting vehicles....

It was ridiculous and still is the vehicles that got low VED's like £30, £20 & £0 and actually never got that great MPG's even though small city type cars.

It was a period of Kidology where the testing was Not fit for purpose.

 

7 hours ago, skomaz said:

Simplest to me would be a yearly rate based on weight and then slap the rest on the energy side of things so on fuel or electricity to charge.  That way the bigger heavier polluting cars get hit more than something light and efficient and likewise those that use more 'fuel'.

 

I get caught currently as I pay more tax on my old mx5 that is lightweight, relatively efficient and does bugger all miles a year than others that have big heavy polluting cars.  My Suzuki is also in a higher band than my mum's jazz even though it is less polluting and lighter weight than the jazz...   Go figure...

 

First paragraph sounds spot on to me. Dead easy to measure, super simple and appropriate. 

4 hours ago, e-Roottoot said:

It was ridiculous and still is the vehicles that got low VED's like £30, £20 & £0 and actually never got that great MPG's even though small city type cars.

It was a period of Kidology where the testing was Not fit for purpose.

 

My wife's Fiesta diesel without DPF is £20/year to tax, and I suspect it is almost certainly less "green" (depending on what you think green means) than our new Octavia with cat and PPF, which is £150/year to tax.

The whole system is a mess.