Classic Car Road Tax Exemption e-Petition

[CitroJim]

More chance of platting fog than the government reinstating the rolling exemption, after all they would be quite happy to scrap all the old motors and have us running round in elecric cars. Plus the millions of pounds the RFL earns them is something they wont do without.

Tim, I really think you've summed it up perfectly there...

[Deanxm]

I dont think it has much to do with loosing revenue as nobody is going to start running around in an old banger just to save themselves a couple of quid a week now are they.

Now that the RFL is emmissions based you do get a significant discount running around using the roads, £200/year in say a V8 sports car when buying the equivillant modern car will land you with a £500/year tax bill. Nobody has put the tax up to £1000 for older high emmisions cars.

I have to admit these things annoy me greatly, why cant people just pay their bit and stop moaning.
If you think motoring is expensive just you wait 15 or 20 years and see what you will have to pay to fuel and use a car then.

D

[Gibbo2286]

More chance of platting fog than the government reinstating the rolling exemption, after all they would be quite happy to scrap all the old motors and have us running round in elecric cars. Plus the millions of pounds the RFL earns them is something they wont do without.

Tim, I really think you've summed it up perfectly there...

It was of course dear Gordon Brown who did away with the rolling exemption, one of his first "gimme your money to squander" tricks.

[lexi]

I own and run a 61 TE Landrover.

I don't really get the TE status. A car has payed x amount of tax and pays no more? Why?

As for being green in the long term, old Landys use a ream of parts and fuel in their long lives although they dont' do mileage. So many have new chassis (mine) dipped in hot zinc........so not eco really.

They keep suppliers going though.........and have 4 dedicated monthly mags. Classic car is an Industry.

[wotwot]

It all gets to political for me. Every political party to stand in parliament is there TO TAKE OUR MONEY and there is nothing anyone can do about it. And they all do it in a slightly different way.
Forget about tax exempt vehicles put the road tax on petrol/ diesel/ gas/ or whatever substance used on the public highway then nobody can avoid it.
Those that have gas guzzlers or use the road more have to pay more sounds fair to me.

[Deanxm]

Forget about tax exempt vehicles put the road tax on petrol/ diesel/ gas/ or whatever substance used on the public highway then nobody can avoid it.

Yep, very hard to find common sense like that though these days. An old lady who has treated herself to a merc SLK to go shopping in wouldnt be slaughtered for tax when someone in a C1 doing 15k a year pays almost nothing at the moment, and no tax disc to mess about with.

D

[wotwot]

I suppose someone could find flaws in the plan somewhere .
The disc would be an insurance/mot certificate, IE no mot = no insurance = no disc, so still checkable with the database DVLA have.

[dieselnutjob]

my 604 doesn't get historic tax and that's just nuts
other countries have an insurance disc instead of a tax disc and I think it would be better
If I have an accident with someone I want to know he's insured, I couldn't give a fig about whether he paid tax or not.

I do think that politically that 25 years is the wrong threshold. In most other EU countries they have gone for 30 years so it would make more sense to align with them, and it would cost less in lost revenue as well. In fact they could set it to 40 years and it wouldn't cost a penny until 2013.

[dieselnutjob]

oh yeah, 2013. that's when I loose £2500 a year in child benefit
damn

[DickieG]

In France if your car is registered as a historic vehicle to claim free road tax you can only drive it within a short distance which IIRC is within your own department of registration and during daylight hours unless you are travelling to a pre-organsied car show on a Sunday or something similar so the present UK system has benefits over other countries systems, anyone fancy matching the French system?

Points such as the one's I've just mentioned are often not realised when people are petitioning to be comparable with other countries in the EU.

[DickieG]

oh yeah, 2013. that's when I loose £2500 a year in child benefit

Please don't get me started on that or similar, as my daughter is 16 funding for her school bus has as part of the cut backs now been removed so even though she goes to the nearest school in my local authority (South Bucks) they sent me a bill for £978 the school is 10 miles away so having worked out the sums it's cheaper for me to drive her to school than to pay that absurd figure which I can only assume is being used to subsidise kids getting it for free, talk about a stealth tax on anyone not living close to their school

[Gibbo2286]

Forget about tax exempt vehicles put the road tax on petrol/ diesel/ gas/ or whatever substance used on the public highway then nobody can avoid it.
Those that have gas guzzlers or use the road more have to pay more sounds fair to me.

This daft suggestion keeps coming up every time there's a discussion about road tax, I say 'daft' because no chancellor is ever going to give up the opportunity to have two bites of the cherry.

At the moment come budget day they can add a tenner on the tax disc and a penny or two on a litre of fuel without much screaming from the public, if they did away with the tax disc and had to add twenty pence a litre on fuel to cover it there'd be riots on the streets.

If they thought they could get away with it they'd add VAT on to the cost of the tax disc like they already charge VAT on the fuel duty.

[Deanxm]

Its not daft at all, fuel has gone up 50p/litre in the last couple of years and i have not noticed any riots.
The good thing about putting the tax on fuel is that you dont pay it if you dont use your car, i dont have a great deal of money at the moment so i have not been using my car, at all, just pedal power but im still paying road tax, in fact since cxm i think ive used about £40 of fuel. I believe more revenue could be generated but if times are hard for you it gives greater control over your spending.
I agree about the insurance disc though, a tax disc, especialy when it is all checked electronicaly now, is just stupid in the extreem, an insurance disc is a much better idea.

D

[DickieG]

The RFL disc is just an indication of duty being paid, many of those being displayed are fraudulent as in stolen or forged, having an insurance disc won't really change a thing in reality. IIRC recent changes made by the DVLA now mean that should insurance expire for a car then it has to be declared SORN and the RFL disc returned to the DVLA so in effect they already have an 'insurance disc'.

An insurance disc does little more than create another piece of paper to put in your windscreen as it does not account for uninsured drivers driving an insured car as in borrowing your mates car when a policy doesn't cover you to drive it, there's a disc in the screen showing insurance when the reality is that you have none, then factor in those who take out a policy to get an insurance certificate then cancel the policy. It's for these very reasons that the Police now use ANPR and telephone the insurance company direct to check 100% whether a driver is covered for driving a particular car.

As far as putting the RFL duty onto fuel, that idea is somewhat flawed in that it puts a very heavy burden onto UK industry compared with other countries in the EU, yes industry uses the roads more but it would undoubtedly cause industry of all kinds to put very heavy pressure on the Government not to do it so you may as well forget that idea.

[Deanxm]

As far as putting the RFL duty onto fuel, that idea is somewhat flawed in that it puts a very heavy burden onto UK industry compared with other countries in the EU, yes industry uses the roads more but it would undoubtedly cause industry of all kinds to put very heavy pressure on the Government not to do it so you may as well forget that idea.

This is the problem though, no matter what you do there will always be someone moaning about it, there will never be a simple solution so its best off leaving everything where it is, of course the RFL is supposed to pay for the roads and so the more wear and tear you place on the roads the more you should pay, I know our fleet of lorries already has a fairly large tax break were the rfl is concerned compared to say a 2.7 C6.

D