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Car Vehicle (Road) Tax
Hurlley
Posts: 2,162 Forum Member
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Basically my car is more than 10 years old and its 1595cc so I pay £205 per year. Which im generally unhappy about.
http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Motoring/OwningAVehicle/HowToTaxYourVehicle/DG_10012524
Theres something I noticed on the website for new car owners that since April 2010 for the first year they have to pay a higher tax rate as "This will send a stronger signal to the buyer about the environmental implications of their car purchase and will only apply to new cars, not already registered cars."
e.g. H 166-175 normally £180.00 but first year for new car = £250
I realise I have no reason to complain since im a cheapskate and new car buyers generally would not care but it seems rather a cheeky (in my view a slap in the face).
The government wanted people to buy new cars with the whole scrappage scheme before, but now charge you more on the first car tax to make you aware of "environmental implication"
I know the whole scrappage scheme is environmentally unfriendly but I suppose that has been discussed to death.
Point im trying to make is it seems rather disgusting how obvious the aim is not about reducing CO2 emissions, they really need to make an effort to not reveal its just money making.
http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Motoring/OwningAVehicle/HowToTaxYourVehicle/DG_10012524
Theres something I noticed on the website for new car owners that since April 2010 for the first year they have to pay a higher tax rate as "This will send a stronger signal to the buyer about the environmental implications of their car purchase and will only apply to new cars, not already registered cars."
e.g. H 166-175 normally £180.00 but first year for new car = £250
I realise I have no reason to complain since im a cheapskate and new car buyers generally would not care but it seems rather a cheeky (in my view a slap in the face).
The government wanted people to buy new cars with the whole scrappage scheme before, but now charge you more on the first car tax to make you aware of "environmental implication"
I know the whole scrappage scheme is environmentally unfriendly but I suppose that has been discussed to death.
Point im trying to make is it seems rather disgusting how obvious the aim is not about reducing CO2 emissions, they really need to make an effort to not reveal its just money making.
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Comments
The example you quoted was H band. There are a wide selection of cars in A, B, C, D, E, F and G bands prior to that.
I personally think it's only fair that if you want a gas guzzling/high performance/big car that as a general rule you pay more road tax. And before anyone accuses me of being anti 4x4 (etc.), I do love Land Rovers
If you want to pay less road tax, you can get a less-polluting car. There are loads to choose from. Peoples arms are hardly tied.
I have a 2.0DTi which is in band G, and I pay £150 a year.. perfectly reasonable IMO.
If it was all about money making why would they charge ridiculously low/free road tax at the other end of the scale? :rolleyes:
...on top of the extra duty you will of course pay as a result of said vehicle consuming more fuel.
At the end of the day, if you are that overly bothered about money saving that's another good reason why not to buy the gas-guzzling vehicle in the first place IMO!
It's a luxury, and a choice, there are lots of bands and cars before the really expensive ones - including functional and family cars.
At the end of the day, there are rewards for picking greener cars - and to the extreme, you can get free road tax if you buy a really eco car.
Doesn't seem a bad deal to me - and I'm not overly hung up by the environment - like I say, I have a 'Mid range' Vectra 2.0DTi and I pay £150, which I'm happy with. It's also nice and economic to run, but still performs well enough and is reasonably comfortable and luxurious.
The vast majority of all cars sold are within bands A-G, in which the first year rate is not different to the ongoing rate.
The "showroom tax" is really aimed at getting manufacturers to improve the efficiency of their vehicles - and they generally seem to be doing a pretty good job on that.
It's a con though all the same. If we all jumped in Smart cars and other pea-shooters tomorrow, the government would shit a brick because of the lost revenue. So pretending that they care about the environment and are trying to alter motorists' behaviour when it comes to car selection is a fallacy, they know all too well that those who can afford to, will just pay whatever is demanded. They'll moan, they'll complain, but they'll pay it anyway.
Am i the only one with a 2.0 tdi paying £205 this year then? Car has just turned 3 years old.
'70 Dodge Challenger 440 R/T
'67 Chevrolet Impala SS
'70 Ford Mustang Mach 1
Just make sure to plan your journeys around the availability of petrol stations.
Running a 10yr-old 2-litre petrol-engined car for another 10 years will cause less environmental damage than that caused by manufacturing a low-pollution hybrid car such as a Prius.
The 'High-tax cos you're hurting the environment' excuse is exactly that - a con.
but then are the government actually doing the job or clearly just making mone,y since if your buying a guzzler you clearly can afford to do so, so where is the incentive to change?
That example applies solely to The Prius - which everybody knows about.
Try again.
If you buy one of these cars such as a Peugeot 107 (?) that has £30 tax, or a VW Bluemotion Polo with Free road tax - and maybe even scrap an old car in the process, it's good for the environment.
I just wish the government would at least put the amount raised in collecting road tax towards expenditure on public roads, fed up with the state of some roads.
The government receives c.£46 billion pa from motoring taxation (fuel duty, VED, VAT and business motoring taxes) and, in return, spends c.£8.8 billion pa on the road network.
(Source: http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm200809/cmselect/cmtran/103/10305.htm)
This means that around 81% of the revenue raised directly from motorists is spent on anything and everything other than the roads those motorists use in order to generate the tax revenue in the first place.
Or, in other words, for every £1 motorists have taken from them by the government, the government puts 19p back into the road network used by those motorists.
Not really, because there are environmental costs both with the manufacture of new cars (between 12 and 28% of a standard gasoline car's emissions according the the Japanese studies quoted in this article, although it is hard to find non-biased sources) and the scrapping of old ones. As long as they're well maintained, cars of the 90s and 00s aren't that much less efficient than new cars. They tend to be lighter, which can offset the less efficient engine, for one thing.
also being kinder to the enviroment by scraping an older car to make way for a new is not always a good thing. Depends on how *bad* the old car is and how *good* the new one is on CO2. I bet you wouldnt gain much or anything by replacing a 90's Toyota Starlet with a Citroen C1 petrol.