The Labour Government

metalblue said:
The problem for Reeves with fuel duty is cars are more economical these days and we have electric cars. I suspect she’ll be more tempted to look at pay per mile. Given the unfair nature of fuel duty (you pay tax on tax) I’d like to see a much fairer system where we pay a fixed cost to register your car each year (around £500) with a pay per mile on main roads and remove fuel duty entirely. Obviously HGVs and the such would have some other fixed cost and potentially per mile rate to pay.

It’ll be far simpler to implement and far more transparent- I suspect it will make people question if they need to travel far more than the current model as it’s much clearer how much each mile costs.
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The problem with that is if you give a toss about net zero (putting aside the madness of it), then that doesn’t encourage more economical engines. I’d be half tempted to buy a 20 year old car with a 6 litre V12 if they came out with a system like that!

I’ve long thought that fuel duty is the best tax overall for the following reasons:

Drive more, use more fuel, pay more. Drive less, pay less
Buy a more economical, more fuel efficient car, use less fuel, pay less
Drive slower, pay less. Thrash the car, pay more etc
Easy to collect, impossible to avoid.

I appreciate people are moving to electric but take up is not where the government would like it, so they could further encourage people by punitive fuel duty rates.

I would not like such a scheme btw, I just suggest that if screwing UK tax payers is your objective, this might be a good way to do it. It also has the advantage that the government can lie about their intentions, passing it off as “sorry, but we’re forced to do this to save the planet - it’s nothing to do with us trying to shaft everyone”.
 
metalblue said:
They’d need to use ANPR type cameras like they’ll have on the M6 toll. Will need to put up cameras on all the main roads. You’ll pay more the more you drive but you do that anyway through fuel duty. The problem with the uptake in electric or hybrids is the state lose that fuel duty revenue when they running on battery power. It needs to be fair as always.

You won’t get clocked on minor roads. The risk is it sends traffic off main roads to avoid the per mile charge of course.
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At some stage the the government is going to have to replace the vast amount of money it receives from fuel duty, just how they do that whilst encouraging the phasing out of the internal combustion engine is above my pay grade. Unless they put a couple of speed cameras on the Mancunian way :-)
 
Chippy_boy said:
The problem with that is if you give a toss about net zero (putting aside the madness of it), then that doesn’t encourage more economical engines. I’d be half tempted to buy a 20 year old car with a 6 litre V12 if they came out with a system like that!

I’ve long thought that fuel duty is the best tax overall for the following reasons:

Drive more, use more fuel, pay more. Drive less, pay less
Buy a more economical, more fuel efficient car, use less fuel, pay less
Drive slower, pay less. Thrash the car, pay more etc
Easy to collect, impossible to avoid.

I appreciate people are moving to electric but take up is not where the government would like it, so they could further encourage people by punitive fuel duty rates.

I would not like such a scheme btw, I just suggest that if screwing UK tax payers is your objective, this might be a good way to do it. It also has the advantage that the government can lie about their intentions, passing it off as “sorry, but we’re forced to do this to save the planet - it’s nothing to do with us trying to shaft everyone”.
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Some very fair points. Your Reeves and you see tax revenue from fuel duty declining. What do you do?

You can’t whack up fuel duty as that impacts the poorest most. I’d imagine a large number of business use cars are electric so those who travel a lot would not be paying anything like the wear and tear they put on the roads (given how heavy these electric cars are). Annual car tax based on value at purchase is actually reasonable policy as it means electric cars pay more as they cost more - perhaps getting revenue from the hybrid/EV car owners that way? But then it discourages take up.

So you’re right it’s probably not great policy towards net zero. But I’m struggling to see what levers the government has.
 
metalblue said:
Some very fair points. Your Reeves and you see tax revenue from fuel duty declining. What do you do?

You can’t whack up fuel duty as that impacts the poorest most. I’d imagine a large number of business use cars are electric so those who travel a lot would not be paying anything like the wear and tear they put on the roads (given how heavy these electric cars are). Annual car tax based on value at purchase is actually reasonable policy as it means electric cars pay more as they cost more - perhaps getting revenue from the hybrid/EV car owners that way? But then it discourages take up.

So you’re right it’s probably not great policy towards net zero. But I’m struggling to see what levers the government has.
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Isn't it something that will happen over a reasonably long timeframe?

The average age of a scrapped car had reached 16 years in 2021 (latest figures I could find). That means there could still be millions of ICE cars on the road in 2051. You'd assume that the switch to electric will happen quicker, but it's still going to be gradual.

At some point you've also got health benefits of lowered pollution kicking in, and do we know what the economics of a net zero economy will be?

When you consider that Reeves managed to deal with £22bn worth of changes in her first statement, replacing a similar amount gradually over a couple of decades, when there will be plenty of benefits too, is probably not something she'd be having sleepless nights about right now.
 
I love how many Tories know what is coming the the budget from pay per mile motoring through VAT increases to more attacks on pensioners. Whereas instead of the few announcements made in the manifesto like VAT on school fees Reeves is observing a period of Purdah as is traditional not that Sunak ever did that we would know his budget by now
 
bluethrunthru said:
I love how many Tories know what is coming the the budget from pay per mile motoring through VAT increases to more attacks on pensioners. Whereas instead of the few announcements made in the manifesto like VAT on school fees Reeves is observing a period of Purdah as is traditional not that Sunak ever did that we would know his budget by now
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We’ve been discussing possible policy choices not saying they are definitely happening.

After your numerous ridiculous Twitter posts over the years it’s a shame to see you’ve learned nowt and still don’t read before posting.
 
metalblue said:
Yup. Flat fee + charge per mile. As you’ll only be able to track mileage on main roads the flat fee is to cover people who never really venture out on them
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Really looking forward to all the villages being used as rat runs to avoid the road charging and having swathes of cars running through them at rush hour.

You would also need to find a way of monitoring cars by some other means than their number plate. The amount of cars running false plates these days is ever growing. The police in 2020 received reports of 20000 false number plates, but the actual number is thought to be much higher.
 
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Chippy_boy said:
You know I think it's funny - and extremely misleading - how the media like to portray this.

They will talk about increased tax burden due to fiscal drag, as if it is some additional pain that taxpayers will feel, an increased tax on them making them poorer.

Of course this is bullshit. When allowances are frozen, no-one pays any additional income tax unless they get a pay rise. And if they do get a pay rise then since income tax rates are never higher than 47% (45% + 2% NI) then you always get to keep at least 53p in every pound of your pay rise. Usually keeping much more than 53p.

i.e. people are always better off as their pay increases. (Of course this excludes the effects of inflation, but inflation also affects their savings and other assets, so is a complicated distraction.)
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Nice try. But it's obviously one reason why the "tax burden" is at a record high.
 
metalblue said:
We’ve been discussing possible policy choices not saying they are definitely happening.
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I'm afraid some posters might have missed the theoretical nature of these debates, judging by the rants about tax changes that are "possible policy choices".
 
Brewster's millions said:
No, I’m questioning why Reeves is saying there will be no return to austerity - and, more pertinently, why people are believing her - when she is raising taxes and reducing expenditure.
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By citing a Tory tax measure?

You're coming up with some odd stuff.
 
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