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Electric Cars – fuel duty and road tax: how to replace £35B annual revenue

carwow.co.uk

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Re: Electric Cars – fuel duty and road tax: how to replace £35B annual revenue

#61

Post by timthorn »

osrec wrote: post #55

Perhaps if the UK government more competently spent it's money, it wouldn't need to replace the lost revenue. The NHS track and trace app, which cost around GBP 40 billion, is an absolute sham. I've worked with NHS trusts that are paying GBP 500 for each lightbulb replacement in a hospital, GBP 200 for a ream of paper, amongst other things. The UK also rakes a significant amount from national insurance and income tax…

Track and trace, including the free covid tests and the staff on the phone lines, cost about £40bn. There is a lot of spending inefficiency in government spending, including that programme, but to suggest that the app cost that much is disingenuous.

Re: Electric Cars – fuel duty and road tax: how to replace £35B annual revenue

#62

Post by throwaway0a5e »

techterrier wrote: post #39
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you try and look for dog whistles everywhere the world becomes a useless cacophony of high pitched screeching. Road tax and vehicle tax are used pretty much interchangeably and I wouldn't read into the word choice any more than I'd read into the results of the coin toss.

*listen

You're being pedantic. Odds are your brain parsed the article from visual input not audio. It could go either way depending on which linguistic hard line you want to take.

Re: Electric Cars – fuel duty and road tax: how to replace £35B annual revenue

#63

Post by dazc »

MafellUser wrote: post #37
dazc wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe not a long term alternative but taxing drivers behaviour via extreme penalties rather than the type of fuel or vehicle they use would not only raise revenue but may also encourage people to drive in a safer and more fuel-efficient manner? For example, overtaking a cyclist regardless of the fact that you are already approaching a stop junction should result in a fine of at least £10,000. Tailgating in a dangerou…

You will NEVER catch the perpetrator. Period. Also the cost of enforcement will quickly outpace any revenue gained, as council's parking enforcements has shown. Even when caught says on CCTV, there's no guarantee you can find and fine the driver. There are over half a million uninsured cars on the UK streets at any time. Twice that many uninsured drivers. Even getting them to pay for insurance is hard enough, how dif…

> 'Even getting them to pay for insurance is hard enough, how difficult do you think it'd be to get them to pay £10k fine?'

In a lot of cases the fine for having no insurance is lower than the insurance would have cost.

In other words, the system is seriously f*d up and needs to be changed.

Re: Electric Cars – fuel duty and road tax: how to replace £35B annual revenue

#64

Post by happyopossum »

causi wrote: post #29
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would just result in a trivial tax for personal vehicles and high taxes on heavy trucks (which would just get passed on resulting in more or less a consumption tax, which isn't necessarily bad but that's outside scope for here) Additionally, despite a lot of people saying they want to use taxes to "handle externalities" or some other sort of "pay per usage" type manner like that what they actually want is to tax…

That would just result in a trivial tax for personal vehicles and high taxes on heavy trucks (which would just get passed on resulting in more or less a consumption tax) That is the entire point. Why are we subsidizing other peoples' bad decisions? If you want to go shop for fast fashion every other day or drive a 9,036-pound electric Hummer the rest of us should not pay the price for your jackassery.

I think you’re trivializing the effect that shipping costs have on every day necessities. Far more trucks haul produce and other groceries around my neighborhood than ‘fast fashion’, and as we are seeing right now significant increases in those prices have an outsized effect on the most vulnerable.

Re: Electric Cars – fuel duty and road tax: how to replace £35B annual revenue

#65

Post by happyopossum »

blibble wrote: post #31
faichai wrote: post #19

Everyone always seems to jump from general schemes (road tax, fuel duty) to Orwellian tracking (GPS everywhere). Seems like a simple scheme of mileage tracking and net charge tracking would do. You then have an overall energy use / mile figure that you can use to price each mile so people who buy more efficient cars are rewarded, and then charge by total number of miles, so people who do fewer miles pay less.

there's a couple of edge cases for odometer based tracking, namely private roads and tracks (e.g. racing)

Would you trust a government imposed GPS based tracking system to properly account for those edge cases? I sure as hell wouldn’t.

Also, those aren’t exempted under the current gas tax model anyway, so why bother?

Re: Electric Cars – fuel duty and road tax: how to replace £35B annual revenue

#66

Post by blibble »

techterrier wrote: post #59
blibble wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see anything in the article that suggests the author wants that to happen? these hysterical responses say more about you then the people you're demonising

I dont think a carsalesman is going to feel overly demonised by being reffered to as part of the car lobby. He does know better than to conflate road and vehicle tax however.

when you can't get the name of the duty right (it's a duty, not a tax), it seems a bit rich to complain about others getting it wrong

let alone accusing them of dog-whistling

Re: Electric Cars – fuel duty and road tax: how to replace £35B annual revenue

#67

Post by planede »

blibble wrote: post #31
faichai wrote: post #19

Everyone always seems to jump from general schemes (road tax, fuel duty) to Orwellian tracking (GPS everywhere). Seems like a simple scheme of mileage tracking and net charge tracking would do. You then have an overall energy use / mile figure that you can use to price each mile so people who buy more efficient cars are rewarded, and then charge by total number of miles, so people who do fewer miles pay less.

there's a couple of edge cases for odometer based tracking, namely private roads and tracks (e.g. racing)

Tracks could be handled by having an official reading when entering and leaving the track, then make the difference deductible from your "miles tax".

Similar stuff for entering and leaving the country.

Not sure how I would approach private roads.

Re: Electric Cars – fuel duty and road tax: how to replace £35B annual revenue

#68

Post by causi »

happyopossum wrote: post #64
causi wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would just result in a trivial tax for personal vehicles and high taxes on heavy trucks (which would just get passed on resulting in more or less a consumption tax) That is the entire point. Why are we subsidizing other peoples' bad decisions? If you want to go shop for fast fashion every other day or drive a 9,036-pound electric Hummer the rest of us should not pay the price for your jackassery.

I think you’re trivializing the effect that shipping costs have on every day necessities. Far more trucks haul produce and other groceries around my neighborhood than ‘fast fashion’, and as we are seeing right now significant increases in those prices have an outsized effect on the most vulnerable.

I can't find any data on what products make up what proportions of the gross weight of land shipping. Without that data it's not productive to debate who would be most hurt by shipping trucks losing their road-wear subsidy.

Re: Electric Cars – fuel duty and road tax: how to replace £35B annual revenue

#69

Post by blibble »

happyopossum wrote: post #65
blibble wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there's a couple of edge cases for odometer based tracking, namely private roads and tracks (e.g. racing)

Would you trust a government imposed GPS based tracking system to properly account for those edge cases? I sure as hell wouldn’t. Also, those aren’t exempted under the current gas tax model anyway, so why bother?

I would indeed prefer the odometer based solution to the GPS

but it's not perfect

(and you are currently exempted from the gax tax model if you have a electric vehicle on private roads / tracks, I doubt too many are affected by this though)

Re: Electric Cars – fuel duty and road tax: how to replace £35B annual revenue

#70

Post by Gordonjcp »

MafellUser wrote: post #58

Completely absence from this are the loss due to lower Benefit in Kind (BIK) for Electric vehicles, and First Year Allowances for EV purchases. Driving an EV means only paying 1-2% per year tax compared to 30-40% for a locally polluting vehicles. First Year allowances mean you claim back 100% of the cost of the EV to offset any taxable income. These business rates mean owning an EV outright as a normal employee is ve…

Given that only two cars I've ever owned in 25 years of driving cost more than £300 to buy outright, I can't imagine paying £300 per month for any sort of vehicle.
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