Budget 2012
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That was when it bottomed out after the first time it hit 115.9 and the media went ballistic.
Your dad? Have you only been driving for 4 years? It was 89.9 in 2008. It was 49.9 when I first started driving in 1997
I used to love being able to do the "2 litre minimum delivery" with a quid.
Care to give concrete examples of businesses actually making good on their threat and upping and leaving a country based on them being taxed a little more?
So first things first, I think its safe to say, no surprises with this. I think rightly or wrongly, deep down inside we all knew another rise was coming on Fuel Duty. We also all knew it would be of these sort of sensationalist proportions.
However.
What I don't honestly get is why we are still messing around with VED. It honestly doesn't make any sense to me, and the more and more I think about it, the more I wish I was good enough at putting together a short structured argument on the commons debate website to push for a change.
I'd personally like to see it abolished. We'd save a fair chunk of money that we currently spend trying to administrate and enforce it, and we could have a much fairer way of managing it by chucking the money on fuel. I'd actually imagine it would get the government more money doing it this way.
We all know that BMW 320d SE Business Specials ramp up and down the motorway network to the tune of 30-40-50-60k a year, and these are some of the cheapest cars to tax on the road. Surely it makes sense that those that do the most mileage (and as such, use the most fuel) pay the most. It will even please the greenies as the more you use, the more you pay. Even a low emissions car is going to pollute more than a weekend use high emissions car when you consider distance covered.
Does anyone know why we aren't doing this? surely it would save a lot of money? we need to start simplifying the way we are doing things in this country and getting rid of the dead weight all over the place. VED is a waste of time to my mind.
However.
What I don't honestly get is why we are still messing around with VED. It honestly doesn't make any sense to me, and the more and more I think about it, the more I wish I was good enough at putting together a short structured argument on the commons debate website to push for a change.
I'd personally like to see it abolished. We'd save a fair chunk of money that we currently spend trying to administrate and enforce it, and we could have a much fairer way of managing it by chucking the money on fuel. I'd actually imagine it would get the government more money doing it this way.
We all know that BMW 320d SE Business Specials ramp up and down the motorway network to the tune of 30-40-50-60k a year, and these are some of the cheapest cars to tax on the road. Surely it makes sense that those that do the most mileage (and as such, use the most fuel) pay the most. It will even please the greenies as the more you use, the more you pay. Even a low emissions car is going to pollute more than a weekend use high emissions car when you consider distance covered.
Does anyone know why we aren't doing this? surely it would save a lot of money? we need to start simplifying the way we are doing things in this country and getting rid of the dead weight all over the place. VED is a waste of time to my mind.
Man of Honour
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What happened to stamp duty for first time buyers? Did they re-introduce it?
The reason London is the financial center of Europe is because another country used to be but it tried the extra tax thing and business moved here iirc.
It's twaddle imo.
They're not going to move to honkers or robber baron-istan or wherever because they like living in Britain where people have manners and you can get good tea.
Also, Terry Wogan.
That's probably for another forum though.
The main reason is that setting VED based on the CO2 output of a car per kilometre distorts demand and encourages the purchasing of more fuel efficient vehicles, even if you don't drive very many miles. Something to bear in mind is that maybe ~15% of the cars on the road are with their first owner - the rest are used, and being driven over a different distance per annum than the intention when they were bought new.
There is, however, a finite supply of used cars, exactly equal to the supply of new cars minus a bit - if you don't have fuel efficient and environmentally friendly new cars, then you don't get environmentally friendly used cars. If you don't have a VED then people who drive very small distances will be happier buying a heavier polluting vehicle; manufacturers of cheap utility cars could have them output 260g/km, and because the typical buyer only drives 2000 miles per year, create a cheaper ownership proposition than a technically advanced, more economical, but slightly more expensive competitor. The £1000 first year VED rate discourages that. It's an extreme example, but that's the principle. If you then don't have these technically advanced low emissions cars being bought new, then you don't have them in the parc to be driven used, potentially over much larger distances.
In reality it's only a small influencer, as fuel taxes reduce the appeal of uneconomical used cars for high mileage drivers, but I'm sure it does have a measured affect, though probably not as much as BIK in the UK.
I'm sure it's quite complex but government meddling in business is pretty much what resulted in London establishing itself as the preeminent financial centre in the known universe. People often believe that you can just raise it one more level, one more level, one more level, but it just doesn't work that way.
There is an elasticity to demand to be here based on price, just as there is an elasticity to demand with the price of consumer goods. For example, if you really wanted an iPhone, how much would you be willing to pay? £750? £1000? £2500? There comes a point where you just can't stomach the cost no matter what the benefits and convenience. When you start raising the price to a point where it becomes viable for the competition to produce a very attractive offering and undercut you, people switch allegiance.
To some degree that's how it works with taxes and where people live, just on a much slower and more complex scale; if it's possible for someone who lives and works in London to arrange their affairs so they go through a low tax centre to avoid a 50% rate, and that hassle and possible travel/location inconvenience becomes worth it, they will do something about it. For some people the rate will be 50%, others 60%, others 70% or more - but there will be a limit. Idealists seem to believe that because living in the UK is so immensely glamorous, and because employees on £200k a year are PAYE, they will never or can't leave... it simply isn't true.
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Yeah becuase people like f1 drivers don't flock abroad so they don't pay tax. It does happen. All you can argue about is how much it happens and how many people/companies do or would do it and at what level of tax.
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Back pockets and to other countries abroad as aid
How about for a change they stop spending in africa/kenya etc and sort out the ******* mess over here they created
Isn't a third of all tax goes to benefits and anothehuge slice of the pie to NHS.
None that I can think of, but pmkeates explains it above better than I ever could.
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