New road taxes are here..

[s2_bo]

Well it was bound to happen sooner or later i guess.

A friend of mine just sent me this link.
Apologies if its been posted before..

[S2central.net]

So - how will those of us with older cars that they have no clue of CO2 emissions fair in these new scheme then - I can't see that for looking. If we get tarred with the 'old therefore not green' card then I'll lead the revolution myself What this cannot do is force people out of older cars into buying new ones just to save tax - the environmental impact of NOT continuing to reuse these older cars is higher.

Car Tax *should* be based on how much you use the roads - not how much your car might generate pollutants... Lets see I do 2500 miles a year in my 15yr old S2 - no way that I am polluting more than someone in a greener car doing 10k miles a year - unless maybe its one of those ubergreen lean burning Polos or whatever.

The problem with taxing on mileage is that they somehow need to monitor usage, and that costs a bloody fortune, invades privacy and is open to abuse unless extremely high tech measures come into force.

[Ian Simmonds]

Unless it's all on the fuel, and not on the screen... Why not have a basic £50 road tax and put the rest on fuel, might not be popular but it'll be fair, tourists, those avoiding road tax and foreign HGV's (not fitted with 60 gallon tanks) would all pay duty...

But it'd force a few thousand civil servants out of a job and make Britain less attractive to visitors... So we can't have that.

[Keeper of The Kitten]

I'm assuming all the new tax bands only affect new cars, and there is still a flat rate for older non-CO2 measured cars?

I firmly disagree with adding the cost to fuel for the reasons mentioned by Paul. It was supposed to be a tax for road use and not for other reasons (although that has long been lost in successive governments having a desire to extract as much money as possible from an easy source...)

Can't see the problem with checking odometer readings at MoT time and taxing based on the miles travelled since the previous MoT, personally.

Or a yearly check along those lines until MoT age is reached.

No need for expensive additional equipment as the electronic MoT stuff exists, and no need for nasty spying on a driver's routes and speeds...

[s2driveruk]

yeah its new car sales as far as i know.....daylight robbery

[dubmeister]

What we have to pay if your car is registered before 1/03/01

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Motoring/OwningAVehicle/HowToTaxYourVehicle/DG_10012524

Now, on my A6 2.5 tdi, which(apparently) emits 150 g/km of co2 i pay £185/yr
For these emissions after 2001 i would only pay £120/yr
Same emissions........why the extra £65, after 215,000 miles i think my engine is slightly cleaner than a new one that hasn't been run in yet!!!!!

Yet another way of the gov. trying to get the older cars off the roads- they have NO idea of the global impact that producing a new car has on the environment.


'kin ****holes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


and if the greens get in we're all ****ed.........................................

[Keeper of The Kitten]

Being thankful for small mercies....

....the S2 will come in at £185 then.

[shark_90]

What we have to pay if your car is registered before 1/03/01

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Motoring/OwningAVehicle/HowToTaxYourVehicle/DG_10012524

Now, on my A6 2.5 tdi, which(apparently) emits 150 g/km of co2 i pay £185/yr
For these emissions after 2001 i would only pay £120/yr
Same emissions........why the extra £65, after 215,000 miles i think my engine is slightly cleaner than a new one that hasn't been run in yet!!!!!

I'm sure that works both ways to be honest. What's an S2's CO2 rating? I'm sure we'd fall firmly into the top bracket, but that wouldn't be fair, because the car was made before CO2 testing and banding came in..

You can't have your cake and eat it.

[Error404]

another example of government punching the middle ground firmly in the face.

I for one am eager for deletion of fuel tax and introduction of road pricing.
those that get charged the most would be people using the busiest roads at busiest times.

People using their cars for needless jourenys (eg city commuters or school run mums in towns) get stung whilst people who have no choice but to drive i.e. people in rural areas see the benefit. It really is the only fair way to do it.

Fuel tax is unfair for people who have no alternative. Its all very well the government pushing people out of their cars, but where i used to live in Devon there are no trains, as the government shut them down in the 60s the nearest bus stop was 2 miles away and there was 2 buses a week into the nearest town.

[s2_bo]

another example of government punching the middle ground firmly in the face.

I for one am eager for deletion of fuel tax and introduction of road pricing.
those that get charged the most would be people using the busiest roads at busiest times.

People using their cars for needless jourenys (eg city commuters or school run mums in towns) get stung whilst people who have no choice but to drive i.e. people in rural areas see the benefit. It really is the only fair way to do it.

Fuel tax is unfair for people who have no alternative. Its all very well the government pushing people out of their cars, but where i used to live in Devon there are no trains, as the government shut them down in the 60s the nearest bus stop was 2 miles away and there was 2 buses a week into the nearest town.

Eye.. thats Devon all over. Here in totes you can still buy fuel with acorns.

In a way im quite looking forward to what way this will go, maybe someone brave will finally take a stand and tell the government to **** off. I bet they wouldn't increase tax on chuck norris's car.

[Error404]

he doesn't need a car he can fly

[sheppardnias]

As much as I hate high fuel taxes, I'd rather see tax on fuel than on my windscreen. Lets say we do 5000 miles a year in our S cars and pay £185 road tax. That works out at 3.7p road tax for every mile we drive. We also have to decide whether we want the car driveable all year round and kept taxed or instead try to save a few quid by taking it of the road for a month at a time. If we get 16 mpg on average from the cars that would mean that fuel could be taxed upto 26p per litre extra and we would benefit still. As low road users in these vehicles we would have to benefit.

Equally in my everyday car I cover 40k -50k miles a year and will be paying only £145 road tax. Given the distance I travel road tax seems to me to be something of a bargain for that car.

Mileage on cars is pointless in being checked. Speedos can be adjusted by any chimp with a laptop and with many cars a simple switch in line to the speedo breaks the pulse signals at any time. In this way you can switch a speedo off on a motorway and back on in town. Handy way of avoiding tax if calculated from a speedo reading and still safe where speed is actually important. Any black box monitoring of a car would be unacceptable with speeding tickets appearing through your door as your own car turned you in for having harmless fun on empty roads.

As disgusting as extra fuel tax might seem, I would willingly pay an extra few pence for fuel if the road tax was completely dropped.

[Error404]

again, that benefits some and not others though.

The only fair way to do it is to charge people for the roads they use... how they do that remains to be seen.

[dan_b]

Can anyone work out what the implications will be for me with my 03-registered A4 3.0V6? It emits 272g/KM, was considered a band-F when that was introduced. Do I now get moved into Band M when that is introduced, or is that only for new cars?

It's darned confusing, and of course the crazy thing is is that my car is much cleaner than the S2 used to be (ha!), and I only drive about 8000 miles a year, so I don't really emit all that much. Bah, it's all a total con to placate the Holier-than-Thous who drive (or think people should drive) Toyota Piuses.

[curlyks2]

how they do that remains to be seen.

[SOAPBOX][RANT]

And it's the how - and follow on possibilities - that scare me.

This government (and contractors) has shown itself spectacularly incompetent at implementing big IT projects in any kind of successful (on time, on spec, on budget, etc) manner. (Apologies if anyone on here actually works/worked on them!) A road pricing (and hence monitoring/tracking) scheme falls into this category, so on previous record is doomed before it starts.

Then there's the inevitable "database" which would have to sit behind it. While some may argue that "if you've done nothing wrong you've got nothing to hide or be afraid of", there are some very recent and very rude examples (all government, some motoring related) where this just hasn't held true:
- MoD lost 11,000 ID cards (linky)
- MoD lost 600,000 records of forces applicants (linky)
- HMRC lost the data on 25,000,000 people (linky)
- NHS lost medical records of 5,000 people (linky)
- CPS lost DNA records of 2,000 criminal suspects (linky)
- DVLA lost records for 6,000 drivers (linky)
Put simply, I do not trust this government with data or IT. That shouldn't be misinterpreted as disagreeing with some of the reasons for some of the schemes that are suggested - I just don' trust them to get them right, or safe, or secure.

Then there are the possible creeping extensions. Since road pricing could involve knowing when are where a certain vehicle was, it's not difficult to imagine the same data being used to catch people speeding. Of course, since government appears to be about spin rather than sanity these days, they'd no doubt advertise it as a reduction in (the then redundant) speed cameras.

As for ID cards, they can have my fingerprints for the database when they prise my cold dead hands open and place my scarred pinkies one-by-one on the scanner.

Ck.

[/RANT][/SOAPBOX]

PS Yes, before anyone suggests it, I am thinking about emigration.