Good to See the BBC Doing Their Bit for Education

meanredspider

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23694438

Explaining that there's no such thing as Road Tax

rubertoe

But who pays for the pot holes?

meanredspider

Council tax

rubertoe

meanredspider wrote:

Council tax

:roll: :roll:

veronese68

Marvellous, I just forwarded that to one of my Wednesday night drinking buddies having had that very discussion last night. He's a very old friend that is impossible to argue with as he can be extremely belligerent. He tried all the old arguments about road tax, insurance and red light jumpers. All were comprehensively proven to be wrong and thrown back at him and, in what could be a first, he eventually went quiet.

mattsaw

rubertoe wrote:

But who pays for the pot holes?

Nobody, they just happen

Runtothehills

Veronese68 wrote:

Marvellous, I just forwarded that to one of my Wednesday night drinking buddies having had that very discussion last night. He's a very old friend that is impossible to argue with as he can be extremely belligerent. He tried all the old arguments about road tax, insurance and red light jumpers. All were comprehensively proven to be wrong and thrown back at him and, in what could be a first, he eventually went quiet.

Just reading around this and found this quote from an article on the BBC:

''The RAC survey also revealed 92% consider themselves to be law-abiding motorists - but 65% admit to breaking the 70mph limit on motorways.''

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22842299

jacknorell

Just saw and was about to post the link.

Good article, maybe it'll help educate some people a little better. Wonder if the Sun would re-print it ;-)

moarspeed

There needs to be a small TV advertising campaign to get the message across, a great way to spend some of that £94 million.
On top of that, DVLA need to do their part and include a statement on the VED renewal notices. Or how about a "I understand that VED is not road tax and does not fund the roads" tick box on the renewal forms and/or website?

davis

MOARspeed wrote:

On top of that, DVLA need to do their part and include a statement on the VED renewal notices. Or how about a "I understand that VED is not road tax and does not fund the roads" tick box on the renewal forms and/or website?

How about just binning VED? It's money that could be collected by other means anyway, and it'd save money on checking that cars had VED.

Of course this would results in non car-owners paying an extra ~100 quid per person, but who gives a stuff about them Londonites?

asprilla

davis wrote:

MOARspeed wrote:

On top of that, DVLA need to do their part and include a statement on the VED renewal notices. Or how about a "I understand that VED is not road tax and does not fund the roads" tick box on the renewal forms and/or website?

How about just binning VED? It's money that could be collected by other means anyway, and it'd save money on checking that cars had VED.

Of course this would results in non car-owners paying an extra ~100 quid per person, but who gives a stuff about them Londonites?

Just increase the duty on petrol to cover it. That may also encourage people to buy more efficient cars which is the aim of VED.

davis

Asprilla wrote:

davis wrote:

MOARspeed wrote:

On top of that, DVLA need to do their part and include a statement on the VED renewal notices. Or how about a "I understand that VED is not road tax and does not fund the roads" tick box on the renewal forms and/or website?

How about just binning VED? It's money that could be collected by other means anyway, and it'd save money on checking that cars had VED.

Of course this would results in non car-owners paying an extra ~100 quid per person, but who gives a stuff about them Londonites?

Just increase the duty on petrol to cover it. That may also encourage people to buy more efficient cars which is the aim of VED.

I really did consider suggesting that, but I am utterly convinced that the idea of buying a new car "because it's better for the environment" is completely stupid, so I wouldn't want to encourage it. I think it's far more ecologically sensible to keep old cars running than it is to scrap them and make new ones (obviously there will be counter-examples in extremis). Think of the embodied energy in that miraculous success of marketing, the Toyota Prius.

vermin

Asprilla wrote:

Just increase the duty on petrol to cover it. That may also encourage people to buy more efficient cars which is the aim of VED.

Bang on. Except that that would be hugely politically unpopular, because the masses believe they are unfairly and disproportionately taxed on fuel already. In contrast, they are quite comfortable with paying road tax, cos it pays for the roads init.

asprilla

Oh yeah. I wouldn't buy a new car to lower my fuel costs, that's a false economy. Spending several thousand pounds to save a couple of hundred a year is madness (but a lot of people do it).

My car gets about 26mpg. It's 7 years old and I expect to have it for at least another 7.

DrLex

Asprilla wrote:

Just increase the duty on petrol to cover it. That may also encourage people to buy more efficient cars which is the aim of VED.

Minor nitpick - the VED rates for cars registered 2001-onwards are linked to CO2 emissions, rather than engine size.
As a yokel, swapping VED for fuel tax would irk me, but seems an easy way to deal with those who duck out of getting a tax disk.

(One of my cars is 50 years old, and has an historic exemption, despite large-ish engine and 15 mpg efficiency. Fortunately it does sub-50 miles a year, including annual run to the M.O.T. station)

asprilla

Increasing fuel duty isn't going to suit everyone and would be massively unpopular but it would be just as effective as VED at whatever VED is trying to achieve these days (environment or revenue raising, you choose) and a damn sight easier to administer.

Mind, I've just worked it out and to get back my VED in duty you've have to raise the price of petrol by 24p a litre.

moarspeed

Asprilla wrote:

Just increase the duty on petrol to cover it. That may also encourage people to buy more efficient cars which is the aim of VED.

Well to save money i'd buy bigger, less efficient cars........ You can get a large 4 year old car for half the price of a 4 year old tiny hatchback. If that difference is £3000, you've saved enough to buy all the extra fuel AND VED at the higher rate, plus your insurance will probably be cheaper because boy racers tend to crash a lot of small cars.

vermin

MOARspeed wrote:

Asprilla wrote:

Just increase the duty on petrol to cover it. That may also encourage people to buy more efficient cars which is the aim of VED.

Well to save money i'd buy bigger, less efficient cars........ You can get a large 4 year old car for half the price of a 4 year old tiny hatchback. If that difference is £3000, you've saved enough to buy all the extra fuel AND VED at the higher rate, plus your insurance will probably be cheaper because boy racers tend to crash a lot of small cars.

That's the spirit!

asprilla

You don't need to tell me. I bought a 3yo luxobarge for peanuts because it was a 3l got 26mpg and costs £400ish a year in VED.

However, I'd bought an existing less efficient car that is already being driven, not a new one and the previous car had been run into the ground so there was no 'loss' on selling that. You wouldn't sell 1.6l Focus to buy a Merc E320 and make your money back.

Encouraging new purchases to be more efficient means that it will trickle down to second hand purchases.

bails87

Asprilla wrote:

Increasing fuel duty isn't going to suit everyone and would be massively unpopular but it would be just as effective as VED at whatever VED is trying to achieve these days (environment or revenue raising, you choose) and a damn sight easier to administer.

Mind, I've just worked it out and to get back my VED in duty you've have to raise the price of petrol by 24p a litre.

33 billion litres of fuel sold per year in the UK

"In the first half of this year, a total of 16.7 billion litres of fuel was sold on forecourts in the UK."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19810276

VED raises about £6 billion per year

VED, which is collected and enforced by the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA), raised GB£5.63 billion in 2009
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_Excise_Duty

So if we add 19p per litre onto fuel then that's:

33,000,000,000 * £0.19 = £ 6,270,000,000.00

Of course you'll get a reduction in fuel use due to the higher cost, but seeing as the idea of the tax is to compensate for the negative externalities of fuel use, that might not matter.

mtb-idle

rubertoe wrote:

But who pays for the pot holes?

Four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire...


Apparently

Kieran_Burns

MTB-Idle wrote:

rubertoe wrote:

But who pays for the pot holes?

Four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire...


Apparently

I think that's meant to say ar*eholes...

anonymousblackfg

Don't forget greener, smaller cars means the cash collected from VED is falling:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/gre ... green.html

Also, Ian Austin MP in May asked Secretary of State for Transport Norman Baker to give his estimate of the proportion of cyclists that own cars.

According to Baker, some 83% of the cyclists participating in the National Travel Survey in 2008 and 2009 were resident in a household with access to a car or van.

The equivalent overall figure for all survey respondents in Great Britain was 82%.

sketchley

Asprilla wrote:

davis wrote:

How about just binning VED? It's money that could be collected by other means anyway, and it'd save money on checking that cars had VED.

Just increase the duty on petrol to cover it. That may also encourage people to buy more efficient cars which is the aim of VED.

This was seriously consider by the government back in the 70s and again more recently. What is comes down to is still needing a register of licensed vehicals so for example the police can still check a vehicle. So there would still be fee to pay for the admin which means your are back to square one.

bails87

You're right sketchley, if only vehicles had some kind of "registration number". Of course you'd need an agency to check that vehicles were registered and drivers were licenced. It's just a shame we don't have either of those at the moment...

On a more serious note, why not have an MOT disc in place of the tax disc.

meanredspider

An insurance disc wouldn't be a bad idea either

rubertoe

meanredspider wrote:

An insurance disc wouldn't be a bad idea either

You cant get one with out the other, no?

meanredspider

rubertoe wrote:

meanredspider wrote:

An insurance disc wouldn't be a bad idea either

You cant get one with out the other, no?

Provided you're insured ON THE DAY you tax the car, you're fine. The other 364 days of the year who knows...

dondare

Asprilla wrote:

davis wrote:

MOARspeed wrote:

On top of that, DVLA need to do their part and include a statement on the VED renewal notices. Or how about a "I understand that VED is not road tax and does not fund the roads" tick box on the renewal forms and/or website?

How about just binning VED? It's money that could be collected by other means anyway, and it'd save money on checking that cars had VED.

Of course this would results in non car-owners paying an extra ~100 quid per person, but who gives a stuff about them Londonites?

Just increase the duty on petrol to cover it. That may also encourage people to buy more efficient cars which is the aim of VED.

VED isn't about raising revenue, it's about regulating and controlling the use of motor vehicles.

moarspeed

dondare wrote:

Asprilla wrote:

davis wrote:

MOARspeed wrote:

On top of that, DVLA need to do their part and include a statement on the VED renewal notices. Or how about a "I understand that VED is not road tax and does not fund the roads" tick box on the renewal forms and/or website?

How about just binning VED? It's money that could be collected by other means anyway, and it'd save money on checking that cars had VED.

Of course this would results in non car-owners paying an extra ~100 quid per person, but who gives a stuff about them Londonites?

Just increase the duty on petrol to cover it. That may also encourage people to buy more efficient cars which is the aim of VED.

VED isn't about raising revenue, it's about regulating and controlling the use of motor vehicles.

If we get right down to the bare bones of it, it's actually just a tax on wealth, just like the window tax in the 18th/19th century.

Back then the wealthly people had large homes, so they taxed the number of windows, people used to brick up their extra windows to avoid the heavy tax, but these days your car is seen to represent your social class and perceived wealth, so they tax cars in much the same way........ The strange twist is that they also want to get old cars off the road and encourage people to buy new cars more often than they did decades ago.

davis

Sketchley wrote:

This was seriously consider by the government back in the 70s and again more recently. What is comes down to is still needing a register of licensed vehicals so for example the police can still check a vehicle. So there would still be fee to pay for the admin which means your are back to square one.

The police DVLA already have that. It's called the MID and has rendered the "keep track of a vehicle, its insurance and MOT status" function of the tax disc moot. It really is pretty pointless, and shifting the tax burden to fuel would mean people would have to pay for using the vehicle (which is the bit that actually affects other people/the environment) [said as an owner of a totally unnecessary vehicle that sits on my drive doing nowt 99% of the time].