Monday 1 March 2010

Tax Disc Enviro-Fun

The Puddlecote Transport Company Inc bought a brand new vehicle last week. We taxed it today.

Four hundred and five fucking pounds!

For the purposes of comparison, this is the same size and is for the same purpose as the one we have replaced, the tax for which was only £210. I'm not into engines, I wouldn't know a cam belt from a suspender belt, but our vehicle maintenance guys reckon the emissions from this new acquisition are far cleaner, and its operation more economic, than any of our current stock. Yet government is charging us twice as much for the VED.

As environmental policies go, that doesn't make much sense to me.

Fortunately, it is to be used on a new contract we have won with a publicly-funded authority, where the price is set by our vehicle costs plus margin, so we'll just pass the increase in tax back to government via our price per mile.

These vehicles aren't purchased by us by way of choice. There simply isn't any alternative for doing the job which we are paid to do. If we could use a Nissan Micra to do a heavyweight task, the tax would be the very least saving we could gain. So we are being penalised for unavoidably running vehicles with large engines when the only other option is a hugely expensive conversion to LPG or some such (the cost of which will far outweigh the extra road tax).

I'm guessing that the reason this is the first time we have encountered this is that the tax hike is only on vehicles registered after a certain date. In which case, our public sector customers are going to suffer rising transport tenders in the future, which you will eventually see reflected in council or other taxes.

If the client is a private sector company, they will just pass the cost on to their customers. That is, you. Again.

Or we could just keep older vehicles on the road and let Gaia go hang.

It's all just a scam, isn't it?


8 comments:

Witterings from Witney said...

"I wouldn't know a cam belt from a suspender belt"

Now who is telling porkies........?

Now what was that Gordon said - something about making life easier for business and reducing their costs?

Lying bastard is he not?

RantinRab said...

It's a win/win for the Gummint.

Tax from you and tax from your customers via vat etc because of increased charges by you on them to pay the gummint.

If you think about it too much your head spins...

Captain Ranty said...

"I wouldn't know a cam belt from a suspender belt"

Well! You wont be hauling my knickers off then.

They are held on with a cam belt.

That's you buggered.

And me not.

CR.

Anonymous said...

I suppose you could have checked the cost of the tax *before* you bought the car but I suppose that's a bit obvious isn't it.

In any event if you can afford a brand new car in the top tax band at the moment you've probably got far too much bloody money anyway so you should really just do the civic thing, pay up and quit moaning about it.

Dick Puddlecote said...

Anon: What car?

Gordon the Fence Post Tortoise said...

Looks like an anonymous Graudian Troll popped up then?

Nah, seriously though - given the state of the roads round ere WTF are they spending the money on? I cossed over to Wales (where some of the money is spent buying Celtic votes) the other week and went over the old Severn Bridge - it's like a motoX course - swear I flew part of the way... in a (LPG) Transit.

Stinking inconsistency is what I really can't / won't forgive. A morass of idiot rules multplying every time I look - so bad the "enforcers" can't figure them out in any of the 9 languages they're available in.

They guff on about g/km and greenhouse gases but if you *know* that your vehicle is farting considerably less noxious gas than most (and the MOT machine says so) and yet you're paying another excise fine becuase of the "size of it's pistons" - it doesn't take the sting out of it.

They don't make big engines just to annoy Moonbat and his Gradiun readers.

It really is senseless greed taken to ridiculous lengths - if t'were seen to fair I, and many other folk would likely accept it without comment - but it ain't fair (OK life isn't yeah, yeah)and we're getting increasingly ticked off as every week passes.

Rab - dunno about head spins mate - more like explodes







.

Bucko said...

"In any event if you can afford a brand new car in the top tax band at the moment you've probably got far too much bloody money anyway so you should really just do the civic thing, pay up and quit moaning about it."

Sounds just like one of them anti capitalists I have talked about previously

Sam Duncan said...

Okay, Anon, you obviously can't read, but let's go with this for a moment. Let's talk about my dad.

He's retired, on a state pension, and a modest private one. Just enough to run a car, when you factor in my mum's Attendance Allowance. Gets them to the shops and her hospital appointments infinitely more conveniently than the bus. His ten-year-old Vauxhall Corsa was rear-ended by a twat in a Beemer, and written off. He got £400 for it.

Now, thanks to the government's brilliant scrappage scheme, one of his friends had just sold an identical car for £2000 and bought a nice shiny new one. He couldn't do that. Writeoffs don't count. So he's got to find a car for 400 quid. And there aren't any, because of the government's brilliant scrappage scheme.

He finally managed to find a 12-year-old Almera for £650, and I lent (gave) him the difference. It's in the next tax bracket up.

But then, he's got enough money, right? He should quit moaning.