UK VED (road tax) increases reaction compared to Irish reaction

Newcarneeded

I was watching Sky news last night and they had fairly thorough coverage of how the increases in road tax would leave a majority of UK motorists worse off, contrary to what Gordon Brown had said in the commons, and Quentin wilson and others being wheeled out to comment were generally of the opinion that it was a disgraceful attack on motorists. I think the AA line was somewhere along the lines of "this confirms our worst fears."

The examples they were giving though, where some of the UK's most popular cars, say Vectra/Mondeo/Avensis 1.8 petrol were going up from (say) £180 to (say) £220. I can't remember the exact figures but they're ballpark accurate.

The worst polluters, say a Range Rover Sport was going up to about £440 ballpark iirc.

Now that is a fraction of what you'd pay over here from now on to tax the equivalent car, €2k on RR sport for example. The sentiment in the UK and reaction has been quite vociferous and there's talk of this being another tax rise fiasco that Labour may have to row back on.

I know that (at least some of) the newspapers in England are nakedly political and there's bound to be a furore in them over this issue too, I just can't help but contrast the reaction there generally to what seems like a much more modest tax increase compared to the draconian measures introduced by John Gormley over here.

Whilst some of you may think that encouraging motorists to switch to a lower CO2 per km polluter and a general switch to diesel is a good idea and others may think it's a bad idea, ultimately the aim and method of the tax changes are the same in both jurisdictions, but in the UK the monetary scale is much less but there's a furore wheras here it seemed to be a much tamer reaction and general ambivalence amongst the motoring public to what were at the upper end, much more penal rates.

I think there's going to be an almighty decrease in the numbers of high performance, high CO2/km vehicles registered here in the future. I think that all €2k a year cars, be they Civic Type R's, S2000's etc are going to become rarer that hen's teeth in 10-15 years as people simply stop buying and importing these cars in the future, wheras in the UK £440 for a Range Rover Sport isn't a lot of money per year compared to the €2k here, never mind our punitive VRT penalty on the same car also.

Del2005

It may work out good for us. People in the UK may change to a newer less CO2 car to save tax and all the old gas guzzlers will get cheaper. We'll have higher VRT but car tax stays the same, so hopefully cheaper cars for us:D

Cmar-Ireland

Just buy a Range Rover Sport and commercialise it. Around 10% of the price of a private one (for road tax) and a nice smug feeling of giving Gormless the big two fingers up.

mike65

Can you still blank the side windows and take out the rear bech and get away with that? Surely you have to be a VAT registered company?

As regards reactions, we are used to being buggered sideways.

Mike.

Cmar-Ireland

No need to be vat registered. Just remove seats and seatbelts. Install a false floor and get an engineers report done up. Off to your local vro and register it for €50.

mickdw

i cant believe how good the new system here is. it is possible to get a car either big or small alot cheaper than before and with lower tax. Im just waiting for someone to open a showroom with all cars 150 euro or less to tax cause its very possible. small cars, family cars, executive cars, sports cars. examples: new TT 2.0tdi quattro 150 euro, bmw 520d 150. family cars- lots. small cars- most of them.

Guy:Incognito

Cmar-Ireland wrote: »

No need to be vat registered. Just remove seats and seatbelts. Install a false floor and get an engineers report done up. Off to your local vro and register it for €50.

Just the small matter of only having 2 seats to deal with after that. Might come as a surprise but not everyone is single and friendless.

Beta Ray Bill

mickdw wrote: »

i cant believe how good the new system here is. it is possible to get a car either big or small alot cheaper than before and with lower tax. Im just waiting for someone to open a showroom with all cars 150 euro or less to tax cause its very possible. small cars, family cars, executive cars, sports cars. examples: new TT 2.0tdi quattro 150 euro, bmw 520d 150. family cars- lots. small cars- most of them.

Sports Cars?

any car that runs on Diesel cannot be a 'True' sports car... with one exception

zilog_jones

That's not the only exception. It looked like half the cars in the Le Mans this year were diesels! What a world...

Beta Ray Bill

zilog_jones wrote: »

That's not the only exception. It looked like half the cars in the Le Mans this year were diesels! What a world...

Yeah I suppose

bt the only reasn they won was cuz they were almost as fast as the petrol cars but didnt have me make as many stops

mickdw

grahambo wrote: »

Sports Cars?

any car that runs on Diesel cannot be a 'True' sports car... with one exception

You know what I meant. But yes I agree that deisel doesnt quite work for proper track driving but day to day driving its not bad. Ive never bothered buying a deisel myself though.