Prediction road tax could be scrapped

[composimmonite]

Anyone else see the prediction by the Transport Minister that road tax could be scrapped in the future and replaced with "pay as you drive" tolls ?
www.express.co.uk/posts/view/347695/Road-tax-to-be-scrapped
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2207374/Road-tax-facing-axe--celebrate-likely-replaced-pay-drive-tolls.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

Paul h

[mjd]

It's not road tax, it's car tax

All this black-box vehicle tracking nonsense is just daft (and probably unworkable in real life). If they want "pay as you drive" then fuel duty seems to work pretty well.

[dbizzle]

Links from the Express and the Mail? Ew. Got any info from any real news sources...?

[VIP]

'Black box' systems will never work, if the technology is 'local', i.e. in the car, people will find ways of blocking/disabling/modifying the electronics or the signal.

[EmDee]

Sept 25, 2012 10:03:42 GMT dbizzle said:

Ew.

+1

[keithyboy]

Haven't we been here before? Sticking it on fuel would be far too simple and effective:

Small car? Do tiny mileage? pay less
Do more mileage? pay a bit more
Bigger, thirstier car? pay a bit more
Big thirstly car and loadsa miles? pay a lot more.

Simple, transparent, hard to avoid/evade.

The old argument was that having to buy a tax disc provided a good opportunity to check insurance and MoT. However, now that The Man can do this electronically whether you like it or not, that no longer seems valid.

[jonw]

How are the silly fuggers going to stick a black box on a 40+ year old vehicle??? The box would be worth more than the tax they'd get out of it.

More pie in the sky if you ask me.

[robinmasters]

Quite. Almost word for word, what I end up shouting at the telveision whenever this is mentioned.

But a slight increase in fuel duty doesn't provide millions of pounds worth of contracts for the government's pet IT contractors

Sept 25, 2012 12:01:17 GMT keithyboy said:

Haven't we been here before? Sticking it on fuel would be far too simple and effective:

Small car? Do tiny mileage? pay less
Do more mileage? pay a bit more
Bigger, thirstier car? pay a bit more
Big thirstly car and loadsa miles? pay a lot more.

Simple, transparent, hard to avoid/evade.

The old argument was that having to buy a tax disc provided a good opportunity to check insurance and MoT. However, now that The Man can do this electronically whether you like it or not, that no longer seems valid.

[jonw]

Sept 25, 2012 10:00:07 GMT mjd said:

It's not road tax, it's car tax

All this black-box vehicle tracking nonsense is just daft (and probably unworkable in real life). If they want "pay as you drive" then fuel duty seems to work pretty well.

PS it's vehicle tax. I have to pay on the motorcycles.....

[joem83]

don't like the idea of black boxes, to easy to monitor your driving/speed for my liking...

[mjd]

Sept 25, 2012 12:14:46 GMT jonw said:

PS it's vehicle tax. I have to pay on the motorcycles.....

Ah yes, so it is

[stealthstylz]

They couldn't put it on fuel everybody would buy old diesels and run them on veg.

[mjd]

If it's meant to be "cost neutral" for the average driver, it wouldn't be that much more on fuel -- hand-waving numbers, but if average VED is £200 and average mileage is 10,000 then it'd need to be 2p/mile extra to make up for VED. No idea what average fuel consumption is, but if it's 35mpg that's 70p/gallon or 15p/litre. That'd take unleaded from £1.40/l to £1.55/l, about a 10% increase. Not sure it would galvanise lots more people to clatter around on chip fat, I suspect most of the folk so inclined are already doing it.

I guess the main problem is that people only grumble about VED once a year but they grumble about fuel prices all the time, so more fuel duty is politically awkward. And also the IT contract thing

[grumpybadger]

It's merely wheeled out every now and then to get the masses used to the idea.
Next there will be a trial period followed by an extended trial followed by another and before you know it we'll all be paying both

[fogey]

'If it's meant to be "cost neutral" for the average driver'

Now, you don't really believe that, do you?

[luckyseven]

Sept 25, 2012 13:32:47 GMT grumpybadger said:

It's merely wheeled out every now and then to get the masses used to the idea.
Next there will be a trial period followed by an extended trial followed by another and before you know it we'll all be paying both

This

A bit like the Poll Tax errr, sorry, Council Tax or whatever the spin doctors call it now. That was wheeled out in an attempt to make paying rates "fairer" across all incomes... yet strangely those of us who were paying an amount of rent towards rates didn't see our rent go down commensurately when the rates were "abolished" . They'll find a way of making us pay both alongside, I'm sure

[waveman1500]

Well, in South Australia they've got rid of our rego stickers now. But we still have to pay it, and just trust that the electronic system has recorded our payment. You get a receipt number to write on your renewal form and that's it. They've made an official government app for iPhone and Android which lets you check the expiry date on any vehicle from the registration number, to make up for the loss of stickers.

[mjd]

Sept 25, 2012 13:32:59 GMT fogey said:

Now, you don't really believe that, do you?

I did say "if"

[crazymonkey]

so if its going to work out not costing us more then bikes are going to be stupidly cheap per mile. I mean my kawasaki and my peds are £16 a year at the moment.

last I heard they were going to put more toll booths on the motorways and dual carriageways but obviously realised that all that would do would clog the back roads up.

[akku]

All these schemes seem set to consume as much money as they would take in. Mind you I have a strong suspicion that at the moment the total Vehicle Excise Duty income is spent on just administering the tax disc process at the DVLA.