Oh noes, the trough is about to run dry…
The UK needs to create a new motoring tax to plug the revenue gap as drivers switch to electric cars, MPs have said.
The government should tax motorists based on miles travelled as the use of petrol and diesel vehicles decreases, the Transport Select Committee said.
If no action is taken this year, the UK faces a £35bn “black hole” in its finances, they said.
I like the assumption being made here – that it needs this revenue. When I found myself facing a financial black hole, I spent less. Simple really. The solution here is for the government to cut its spending by £35bn and that ‘black hole’ goes away. Any idiot can work it out. If they need guidance on where to make cuts, I’d more than happily volunteer my services. Gad, I’d even do it for free. Call it a service to my fellow man.
They could just make EV owners pay tax to the same value as ICE owners.
I prefer cutting their spending, frankly, and doing away with whole swathes of tax.
And what about people like me? Mt little diesel Fiesta is tax exempt so I don’t pay any at all. I’m sure not going to start now. If someone wants to buy a cordless drill on wheels they should be taxed by the usual rules regardless of the method of propulsion. Neither should I be penalized for taking advantage of a government initiative.
I agree that cutting spending and cutting taxes is a better option. However, this particular hole in the finances is a problem of their own making. They decided to give EVs a free ride to encourage people to buy them and now they have a shortfall. Why exactly was this a surprise? It was hardly something that was difficult to predict.
See also, lockdowns, masks, antisocial distance – indeed everything these cretins come up with. We can see it, but it always seems to come as a surprise to the political class.
“…and doing away with whole swathes of tax…”
Doing away with whole swathes of government/civil service would be a good move, as well.
Well, yes. The more the merrier.
But if they do that the cost of running an EV will be way higher than an ICE and the peeps will not switch. They need a large installed base of the stupid before switching on the taxes.
No, they should do both – cut (wasteful) spending, AND tax EV owners the equivalent of fuel duty. Wipe the smug grin off their faces, and then watch sales plummet. Actually, the forthcoming requirement for all home chargers to be “Smart”, meaning they will only operate if the grid can handle the demand, should make existing and potential owners think twice…
Hey! – here’s an idea – Land Value Tax (not really a tax at all).
I’ve discussed this in the past. Nope. Never. It’s an incredibly regressive tax that penalises people without the ability to pay. Horrible, horrible idea and I will never be persuaded otherwise.
Yep
http://kaalvtn.blogspot.com/p/index.html
Yes, I know. I did this to death with him a decade ago. I’ve heard all of the arguments, including Mark’s workarounds. The fact that you have to have the workarounds expose the underlying regressive nature of the tax. I’m not going to go through it all again, suffice to say that any tax that does not take into account the ability to pay from current income is regressive and morally reprehensible. I will never support the idea of LVT as it is deeply repugnant.
Cut spending.
Remove ev subsidies and grants for home installation, etc.
Let people decide which they want and let the market decide.
Some people will want oversized hairdryers to drive around in.
I love my big diesel engined truck.
I’d also like to point out the incredible short sightedness of the cities that want to introduce anti-diesel car charges for cities.
I already find going into cities if I need to shop unpleasant – expensive parking etc. Do they think that this is going to do anything than make me want to do all my shopping on the internet?
Another nail in the coffin of town and city centres. Then they’ll be moaning that the cities are graveyards and nobody’s coming to them any more.
Oh, I stopped going into the city years ago. An already unpleasant experience is now intolerable.
A standard question for our drivers is whether they are ok going into London. A lot more say no than say yes.
Funny that…not.
I think MP’s salaries and expenses should be withheld until the state budget at least balances.
As LR its years since i stopped high street shopping.
Between shops that treated you like something they found on the sole of their shoe to councils who made getting there and back through road systems designed to thwart any progress, then pay through the nose to park if you can find a space and return to your car to find some plank who can’t drive his oversized barge has damaged it and buggered off, well basically no they can stick the high st where the sun don’t shine sideways and dry.
It was obvious they were coming for the motorist, someones got to pay for Rishi’s ring piece prodigiously producing billions of borrowed ££ which between the various twats in govt they’ve managed to piss up the wall over the last 2 years, might as well be us.
I’m not having a bloody battery car, end of, when our ageing Diesel and LPG converted petrol cars (well maintained and rustproofed) have been taxed off the road we’ll do without any car at all and that’ll be 3 lots of insurance fuel and road taxes alone they won’t be getting their greasy bloody mitts on.
That’s pretty much my decision. I’ll stick with my petrol motorcycles as long as is possible, then when its battery or nothing, nothing it will be. Reluctantly, but electric bikes are hideously expensive and lacking in any character. Horrible things.
Last time I checked, and it was a while ago, fuel taxes could be eliminated if that coincided with disbanding the Department of Business innovation and skills.
Bonus!
Along with media culture and sport. In profit, then.
Read Churchmouse’s post on why Lord Agnes resigned.
Why is this not broadcast more?
That would be Lord Agnew, but my pad knew better.
Taxes like this are supposed to limit people doing something that is frowned upon. If everyone moves to EVs then it should be job done and no more road taxes, but they don’t see these taxes as a bonus, but a necessity
It will be the same if everyone gives up smoking. Ramp up the tax on E-cigs, then find a way to tax non-smokers more
After what we’ve seen these past couple of years, saving £35bn should be childs play for them, but they’ve probably not even considered it
It’s why I am opposed to pigou taxes. It is not the government’s place to manipulate out behaviour. And, of course, the bastards get used to the idea of the money flowing in. Scum.
The proposed new road taxes also seem to require knowing your location at all times so they can do smart pricing. I know my smart phone already means I can be tracked but the extra layer of monitoring does add a layer of suckiness
Apparently they will track us by our phones via GPS. So if we leave our phones at home and just get a burner for emergency and only turn them on when we need assistance, are we going to be invisible?
Care in the community carers have their own phones and work phones. Will they get charged twice?
I suspect they will have to fit something to the car itself.
Maybe they can actually start repairing the roads. The pot holes in North Devon are like a virus, constantly multiplying and my car is always needing work due to them.
They are planning to fit a device to the car. All new cars (bikes are not yet included) from August this year will have to have devices fitted that regulate speed. This will work from either GPS or reading road signs. So that’s how they will do it. Using phones is too flaky for the reasons you put here.
Both of which can be easily jammed or spoofed. The camera device fail to read the speed signs if they accidentally 🙂 get some petroleum jelly smeared on the lens. A GPS jammer can run off the lighter socket on a car to either make it invisible or to spoof the signal so that it thinks it is somewhere else (like your driveway).
Not that I’m advocating such measures, just saying that they are entirely possible.
One of my fleet features a camera which reads speed-limit signs and projects the limit onto the dashboard. Foolproof? Not when a well-targeted bird-turd landed on the lens area of the windscreen, a section not cleared by the wiper-arc.
It’s going to be a mess just like all this crap is.
Our trucks where i work have more electronic tat bolted on than you can shake a stick at, including all round cctv cameras, if they work fully 3 weeks on the trot without a glitch its a miracle, the newer the vehicles the more electronic junk they come with and the more time spent in the workshops trying to fix it all.
I hesitate float here the most obvious solution to their desire to raise oodles of cash from both ICE vehicles and dodgems.
All they need to do is add a monstrous extra tax on tyres – all types of vehicle need them, they wear out in rough proportion to road-mileage used and the more upmarket cars have more expensive tyres, so the tax-raid would count as ‘progressive’.
Fortunately that’s far too simple, so they won’t do it.
As they have mandated that a home car charger has to have its’ own electricity meter, they can simply factor a charge (ho ho)into the cost of the electricity to charge your car. Same at charge points around the country. There will still be peeps who’ll get round it (or try)and I never cease to be amazed at how clever some people are.
What will stop this milk float circus in its tracks (and it may have already) is the utter impracticality of providing a charging network that would come within a even a few percent (probably even 1 percent!) of the utility of the current network of petrol outlets.
Milk floats will simply not be a viable (or perhaps that should be comparable) tax base, no matter what taxes or costs can be imposed on them.
25/8/366 tracking of all vehicles (never mind the actual utility of this, such real world considerations are never at the forefront), is one of the globohomo wet dreams.
When the milk float “revolution” is delayed (again and again and again) they will have tracking and “fair use” pricing in place – how convenient!
Actually it will be another Everest sized, grift/charlatan dominated, unworkable and spectacularly wasteful clusterfuck, but hey ho!
And those driving European cars permanently in the UK will still get off without paying because the EU countries (still salty about BRExit) will say “Sorry. Can’t exchange driver license and insurance details with the UK because of EU privacy laws”.
Even if only a few countries withhold information from the UK, the gypos will conveniently have fake plates, drivers licenses and insurance details from those countries which withhold information. While in reality being permanently resident in the UK.