CO2 swindle

zielarz

I was wondering what's the rationale behind new motor tax rates based on CO2 emission? Was is proposed by the greens in order to limit the CO2 emission to the atmosphere? If that's the case then why the rates are not proportional? Why emission of 230 (G band) costs 20x times more than 120 (A band)? At the moment you pay the same amount of tax for 20 cars with emission of 120 as for one car with emission on 230. That's ridiculous! The greens either don't know how to count or they don't really care about the ecology.

miju

if you pardon the pun it's all just a smokescreen to be seen to do something.

nothing more nothing less

robbie99

The greens can't count but can you divide? Band G would be 20x band A.

peasant

The CO2 system was set up to dress up the old VRT in new clothes in order to make it easier for the EU to overlook this punitive import tax.

zielarz

robbie99 wrote: »

The greens can't count but can you divide? Band G would be 20x band A.

Band G is about twice the CO2 than A so fair tax would be doubled but it's actually 10x more than that.

robbie99

zielarz wrote: »

Band G is about twice the CO2 than A so fair tax would be doubled but it's actually 10x more than that.

It's actually 20x more than that.

zielarz

robbie99 wrote: »

It's actually 20x more than that.

You're right, my original post was wrong.

robbie99

Now that that's sorted, if you have a choice of two equally good cars to buy and one costs 20x a year more to tax than the other which would you choose? That's the rationale behind the CO2 emmisions based motor tax.

conneem-TT

robbie99 wrote: »

Now that that's sorted, if you have a choice of two equally good cars to buy and one costs 20x a year more to tax than the other which would you choose? That's the rationale behind the CO2 emmisions based motor tax.

But why should I who travels a bit less than 10,000km/year pay 20x more "CO2" based tax than someone who although may have a car that puts out half the emissions of mine yet travels say 3x as much and therefore is "polluting" more.

robbie99

conneem-TT wrote: »

But why should I who travels a bit less than 10,000km/year pay 20x more "CO2" based tax than someone who although may have a car that puts out half the emissions of mine yet travels say 3x as much and therefore is "polluting" more.

You're paying 20 times more motor tax than someone else???? That's only possible on a new car bought since July this year. What Band G car did you buy in the past 6 months and why are you begrudging someone doing more mileage than you in a band A car?

unkel

miju wrote: »

it's all just a smokescreen to be seen to do something.

nothing more nothing less

QFT

If they were really green, really cared and had some balls, they'd make the polluter pay. Alas, they're the same breed of politicians as the rest of them...

Seth Brundle

unkel wrote: »

QFT

If they were really green, really cared and had some balls, they'd make the polluter pay. Alas, they're the same breed of politicians as the rest of them...

Never a truer word spoken!

conneem-TT

robbie99 wrote: »

You're paying 20 times more motor tax than someone else???? That's only possible on a new car bought since July this year. What Band G car did you buy in the past 6 months and why are you begrudging someone doing more mileage than you in a band A car?

It doesn't matter what car I have, it's the fact that it is a CO2 based "polluter pays" tax, where as I have said above, someone who is paying 20x the tax can in some situations be polluting less than the person paying the band A amount.

And I did not think my previous post came across as begrudging the other road user, it was aimed at showing what a charade the scheme is.

daveharnett

Preaching to the choir here TBH.

techdiver

zielarz wrote: »

Band G is about twice the CO2 than A so fair tax would be doubled but it's actually 10x more than that.

The reasons for the difference is to encourage people to buy greener cars.

As a motorist I agree with the new tax rates.

robbie99

conneem-TT wrote: »

It doesn't matter what car I have, it's the fact that it is a CO2 based "polluter pays" tax, where as I have said above, someone who is paying 20x the tax can in some situations be polluting less than the person paying the band A amount.

And I did not think my previous post came across as begrudging the other road user, it was aimed at showing what a charade the scheme is.

I don't like defending this implementation of the motor tax because I don't like many of the Greens extreme views and I'm not an enviromentalist although I do like to see the environment being kept clean! If they had their way they'd ban cars altogether.

Motor tax used to be cc based, now it's CO2 based. I don't see how mileage can easily be brought into the equation for motor tax. The current motor tax is effective in that it certainly encourages you to buy 'greener' cars. If you want to bring the 'polluter pays' principle into this then a carbon tax needs to be brought in and that will be applied to the fuel, not to the car. I don't think it's the Greens who don't have the balls to do this - it's Fianna Fail. Anyway, there's plenty of excise duty and VAT already on petrol so I don't think we need another tax on top of that.

I'm only trying to be fair to Greens here as I think they're well able to count and what they've introduced while draconian has actually been effective in encouraging us to go lower emmisions. Is this a fair tax? I don't know. Is paying 41% income tax fair when many are paying 20% or less?

conneem-TT

I agree with you that something has to be done, but I think this is a pretty weak effort, and unfairly targets the motorist, I mean for example, if someone travels by air, each mile they travel put's out the same CO2 equivalent pollution as traveling the same milage in an average car (Band D/E).

But seeing as it is a CO2 tax, I would at least like to see every cent of it going towards developing a strong renewable energy network for the future. But IMO the real challenge the world has to face in the coming years is due its population, just look at the fact that the world's population estimated to be 6.7 billion now has more than doubled since 1960 :eek: and the demands this will place on our resources.

DanGerMus

I think they should stick it all on fuel. Most effective, fair and accurate way to get the highest... offenders if you will. High mileage motorists are usually taxi drivers, reps etc and paid well enough. Then special rebates for Hauliage and Public transport, busses etc based on mileage. Either that or let em use the green stuff.

Then i'd by that tastey 5l V8 merc that i want becuase i do about 4 miles a day to and from work and can cycle if i want. Because with it i'd be poluting and using roads less than a 1.6 high mileage diesel doing 20-30k a year.