Wednesday 12th March 2008
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So, Alistair Darling released the details of his first budget as Chancellor of the Exchequer. In doing so, he revealed the sweeping changes that would overhaul the Vehicle Excise Duty tariffs. These tariffs were brought in in 2001 after some pointed-headed ‘green’ boffins started whinging about CO2 emissions from vehicles.
Now, these old tariffs clearly aren’t good enough, and there’s too many 4×4′s and ‘gas guzzlers’ on the roads, so the government’s new solution is to tax the living shit out of the owners of such vehicles. Or, not, as the case for the majority of owners of these highly pollutant, toxic, carbon-unfriendly, whale-killing and seal clubbing vehicles…
I own a Mazda RX-8. Yes, it’s a sporty car. Yes, it’s not particularly economical to run, and it is, unfortunately for me, capable of putting out 284 grams of CO2 per kilometre. This places it in the highest of all the new tax-brackets – class ‘M’. This is the same class as such MPG-fearing giants as the Lamborghini Murcielago, Aston Martin DB9 and the Ferrari F430. Zippy the RX8 may be, but ‘supercar’ it is not.
Cars in class ‘M’ will have to pay a frankly ridiculous £440 a year in vehicle excise duty in 2009, rising to £455 in 2010. What’s more – if you intend to buy a new class ‘M’ car in 2010, best make sure you add an extra grand to the ticket price, because that’s what the government will take off you when you sign on the dotted line.
Whilst this is all admirable and is no doubt making the green tree-hugging hippy bastards out there overjoyed with Labour’s ‘positive’ response to the ever growing Carbon-neutral debate, it does have one, massive, huge, inexplicable flaw.
In order for this to work, the government should have put every single make and model of car into this database, and sorted them accordingly – and, they did – but only for cars registered after 2001. This means if you’ve got a ‘gas guzzler’ registered before 2001, you’re laughing all the way to the bank – whilst cutting down the rainforests and pissing on the polar ice-caps:
Own a 1989 3.7 litre Porsche 911 Turbo? £185, please.
Own a 1984 4.2 litre Range Rover? £185, please.
Own a 1996 6 litre Ferrari F50? £185, please.
Own a 1999 5.7 litre Hummer H2? £185, please.
Own a 2007 3 litre diesel Renault Espace? £400, please.
It’s pure fucking lunacy.
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Road tax is the devils work and thats all I have to say on the matter.
I’m perfectly aware of the running costs of my car. I knew about the poor fuel economy before I bought the car – that’s not the point.
This is the government screwing the wrong people (again) out of over £200 extra a year.
If Alistair Darling is going after me all guns blazing, why isn’t he doing the same to the guy down the road with a fifteen-year-old V8 Range Rover that emits nothing but noxious, acrid black smoke out of its exhausts? Why does he continue to pay £185 and upset the precious carbon balance, yet I, with my fully Euro IV emissions-compliant RX8 have to pay over £400?
Thought I’d put things into perspective for you, James.
Mazda say that the RX8 does broadly speaking 25 mpg. Lets say you do the average number of miles in a year as far as insurers are concerned – 10k.
That’s 400 gallons or 1816 litres of fuel a year.
At the moment, unleaded costs about something like 105 – 110p a litre. This is bound to keep on going up, so lets say the average for the year is 110p a litre.
That means this year you’d pay about £2000 for fuel to do your 10k miles in your RX8.
To me, this makes an additional £200 of tax seem like quite small sum, really.
What would be good, of course, would be the ability to pay for it in monthly installments…