"Road Tax"

[oldroadman]

Can we settle this once and for all. It's Vehicle Excise Duty.
Yes, it's a tax - on ownership of a vehicle which the owner wishes to place on the public highway.
It has nothing whatsoever to do with paying for roads, or entitling the use of any roads.

We also pay National Insurance.
That's a tax too, on employment, for both employer and employee.
But no-one calls it "Work Tax", or "Job Tax".

There is no "Road Tax", because it's hard to get tax from an object which has no NI number, and no address. Anyone tried to send a tax bill to "M1, Leeds and London"?
The "Road Tax" was a pre-WW2 thing which in the government changed to VED in the 30's.

So to the cry of "you don't pay road tax", the correct and polite response is "neither do you, you pay VED".
Something to get the numpties thinking, as you ride off through the traffic holdup they are stuck in!

 

[Bicycle]

But my cars have tax discs on the windscreen....

Isn't that for road tax?

 

[MrHappyCyclist]

So to the cry of "you don't pay road tax", the correct and polite response is "neither do you, you pay VED".
Something to get the numpties thinking, as you ride off through the traffic holdup they are stuck in!

It doesn't work. Given that it's actually GVED, then "you pay pollution tax" would be better, but that doesn't work either. When someone has a brain smaller than one of his gonads (are we allowed to say gonad?), you can't make a rational argument with him, (or ovary if it's a woman).

 

[yello]

You are right orm... but can you really be bothered arguing the toss over finer detail?

Popularly, it's called road tax. Accept that and if you really want to argue it further, then raise the other issues (it goes into the general tax pot, everyone pays for roads etc etc etc).

 

[Peteaud]

Its still a tax tho

 

[jayonabike]

I do pay road tax, bloody £244.75p today for 6 months

 

[snorri]

I do pay road tax, bloody £244.75p today for 6 months

Amazing. There are still some great bargains available in UK plc

 

[Peteaud]

I do pay road tax, bloody £244.75p today for 6 months

what do you drive, a tank?

 

[jayonabike]

Almost. A Volvo v70. Its the engine size that does it. 5 cylinder 2.5 Litre petrol turbo. But its a luxury in life I enjoy and I work hard enough so why not.

 

[Alembicbassman]

VED is not pay as you drive which p*sses me off. My Vectra 1.8 is 177 g/Km CO2. I pay £210 a year VED and do 10000km (mostly motorway at 60 mph) between 6am and 2pm commuting when there's no traffic, I don't use the car for leisure (that's what my bike is for).

I could buy a Fiat 500 Twin Air with an 875cc engine producing 95g/Km CO2 which is £0 a year VED, but if an owner of this did 20000Km a year they would produce more CO2 than me. They wouldn't even have to do 20000KM if they lived in a city crawling along in rush hour traffic.

Scrap the VED system and put the money on petrol, would suit me fine.

 

[youngoldbloke]

Oh no - here we go again ..... of course if you drive a small-engined low-emission vehicle you are exempt from VED anyway - as would be a bicycle. So what is the point anyway? However, it is not helpful for a cyclist to continue to refer to VED as 'road tax'. Let's set a good example and use the correct terminology.

 

[MrHappyCyclist]

VED is not pay as you drive which p*sses me off. My Vectra 1.8 is 177 g/Km CO2. I pay £210 a year VED and do 10000km (mostly motorway at 60 mph) between 6am and 2pm commuting when there's no traffic, I don't use the car for leisure (that's what my bike is for).
I could buy a Fiat 500 Twin Air with an 875cc engine producing 95g/Km CO2 which is £0 a year VED, but if an owner of this did 20000Km a year they would produce more CO2 than me. They wouldn't even have to do 20000KM if they lived in a city crawling along in rush hour traffic.
Scrap the VED system and put the money on petrol, would suit me fine.

You're missing the point. It is about encouraging people to buy cleaner cars irrespective of what mileage they do, putting consumer pressure onto the manufacturers to innovate in areas like engine efficiency.

As you suggest, there is also duty on fuel, which is the one that should discourage people from doing a lot of miles.

 

[oldfatfool]

Originally a road fund license HMRC still refer to it as road tax

 

[User269]

Roads are paid for out of council tax. Motorways and some trunk roads are paid out of general taxation, of which VED (car tax) represents a tiny proportion.
Cyclists pay council tax, which pays for the roads. In any case, the roads are for all of us to use, not just motorists.

 

[Alembicbassman]

A car sat on the driveway doing 0 miles is cleaner than a low emission vehicle crawling along the North Circular at 8am. A huge amount of energy is required to convert raw/recycled materials into a brand new car, encouraging people to buy new cars is only benefitting the retailers and exchequer in VAT and registration fees. Li-ion batteries are also quite toxic and may need replacing every 5 years or so. If you're going to tax CO2 then tax dairy farmers, cows produce a huge amount of CO2 and milk is cheaper than petrol.