Diesel tax may be increased in Budget 2018

twin_beacon

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/environment/diesel-tax-may-be-increased-in-budget-2018-1.3174780


"Tax on diesel fuel may have to be increased to limit a trend that has seen the number of private cars powered by it rise significantly in recent years, the Department of Finance has warned."

You mean the trend that was encouraged the FF/Green government in 2008?

Ubbquittious

Of course. Get everyone to do something and once they're comfortable and dependent on doing said thing tax them for it. Herd all the sheep into a cattle crush and then start bating them with sticks !

CJhaughey

I read the word Cities 4 x in that article and therefore would it not be more equitable to have increased charging for city use?
But as said above the regime that was proposed and adopted by the Green Party has lead to an explosion of diesel adoption by people that have no need to drive diesels in cities.
Herd em and bate em indeed.

Vic_08

Because obviously after spending another €500 on taxing the thing nobody is going to want to get value out of it by driving everywhere.

Caliden

Everyone saw this coming down the line when they introduced the new tax bands for emissions.

You could hardly expect them to keep the rates so low.

theteal

I think your "may" is more than optimistic, OP. It's definitely happening and the only unknown factor is by how much

colm_mcm

This is tax on the fuel though?

Cee-Jay-Cee

Ubbquittious wrote: »

Of course. Get everyone to do something and once they're comfortable and dependent on doing said thing tax them for it. Herd all the sheep into a cattle crush and then start bating them with sticks !

Deservedly so!

Ubbquittious

Cee-Jay-Cee wrote: »

Deservedly so!

Twill be the same story with EV's in a few years. They'll be all made "fill" them with virtual petrol that is taxed at a high rate and a software update will cause the cars to stop once they "run out" of virtual petrol

Once they bring in that system there will be FinneGwale lickspittles and apologists saying "but sure you knew it was short-lived, temporary, unsustainable, too good to be true, roads have to be paid for and all the rest now pay up you big dumb fluffy sheep!"

grogi

For someone that is not supposed to use diesel (let's say doing 10000km/year) and achieves average efficiency of 6l/100km, the increase of €0.15 on litre means yearly expenses going up by €90. That is not going to push those people away from diesel.

I basically don't agree with the increased duty on diesel - because that is only penalising those who complied with the government previous policies. Revised VRT rates would control the new/imported market better.

Alf Veedersane

grogi wrote: »

I basically don't agree with the increased duty on diesel - because that is only penalising those who complied with the government previous policies.

Tbf, most people didn't go with diesel to comply with policies. They did it because it was the cheaper option.

neris

grogi wrote: »

the increase of €0.15 on litre means yearly expenses going up by €90. That is not going to push those people away from diesel.
.

that 15 cent is a big increase if your filling up 400-1000 litres at a time and have a fleet of trucks on the road.

grogi

Alf Veedersane wrote: »

Tbf, most people didn't go with diesel to comply with policies. They did it because it was the cheaper option.

Semantics. It was cheaper option because it was the government policy...

neris wrote: »

that 15 cent is a big increase if your filling up 400-1000 litres at a time and have a fleet of trucks on the road.

That's what I mean - it will not hurt those who should not be using diesels, but will hurt those who actually should - logistics.

In the end the average soccer mum will still be driving a diesel SUV - because it is so much cheaper to buy than a decent petrol - but everyone will suffer because of increased cost of doing business.

Skylinehead

Whatever the justification, diesel has no reason to have cheaper excise than petrol.

Phil.x

" “unintended consequence” of changing the system of motor tax and widening the gap in taxes paid between petrol and diesel has substantially increased the number of diesel cars on the road."

They really are a bunch of dumb people who are in government, do they not think of their actions?..no they don't as they only copy the English ways.
Long live the queen.

Pugzilla

Hope the evil diesel drivers choke on their fumes.

Ubbquittious

Ubbquittious wrote: »

Twill be the same story with EV's in a few years. They'll be all made "fill" them with virtual petrol that is taxed at a high rate and a software update will cause the cars to stop once they "run out" of virtual petrol


[/I]

This "virtual petrol" sounds a lot like electricity

Ubbquittious

BrownFinger wrote: »

This "virtual petrol" sounds a lot like electricity

Electricity is easy to generate from solar panels in a field or from a genny filled with green diesel and the government doesn't have the same stranglehold over the supply as with petrol, hence the need for virtual DRM-enabled fake pretend petrol that's taxed at about 10c/km driven

It's 2.2c/litre extra in this budget. Diesel is cheap currently to be fair. Can be got for €1.14 ish in some Dublin stations.

Cee-Jay-Cee

Alf Veedersane wrote: »

Tbf, most people didn't go with diesel to comply with policies. They did it because it was the cheaper option.

To expand on that they went for it because of cheap tax. All those people were happily driving around in petrol cars before hand but they seen the chance to pay €200 a year less tax and jumped at it. Most haven't a clue what their cars are doing per gallon or km, most never look at the cost per litre of diesel and couldn't tell you what a litre costs. All they know is they pay less nowbin tax than they did when they had their 1.6 petrol or whatever.

zilog_jones

Cee-Jay-Cee wrote: »

Most haven't a clue what their cars are doing per gallon or km, most never look at the cost per litre of diesel and couldn't tell you what a litre costs.

They also probably haven't a clue about DPF regeneration, how to avoid premature DMF failure, etc...

166man

Delighted. If you can sign up to a €50k PCP then you'd want to be able to afford the fuel to run it.

Laughable people spending €40-€50k on a car and being worried about a few cent rise in the price of fuel. Especially when it's spewing foul emissions out the back.

Meanwhile I'll pay the value of my car in motor tax alone every year. IMO current motor tax rates under €750 on the new system should be doubled.

BorneTobyWilde

Duty on petrol on diesel needs to be the same
'' so lets raise the duty on diesel''

OR LOWER IT ON PETROL !

If you lower tax on petrol fuel and road tax then people will prefer a petrol. If petrol was 1.00 a litre we'd all use petrol cars.

grogi

OSI wrote: »

In saying that, I've never understood why diesel was granted special status in this country with the cheaper excise, when most countries are the opposite so I won't be too crushed to say the excise being increased.

Not in most countries. The only countries from the list below (I though it was covering only Europe, but it is more than that) where diesel is more expensive are: Belarus, Israel, Kuwait, Serbia, Switzerland, USA, UK.

http://www.fuel-prices-europe.info/

bazz26

This is only the start of it and it won't be limited to the big bad diesel engine either. I'm sure we will be on here in 10 years time talking about all those "saps" who signed up for the cheap incentives to swap their evil petrol and diesel cars for EVs and how they are now going to be screwed in the next budget because the demand on the infrastructure requires it. Revenue being generated from the motorist is a certainty as is a bit of Irish begrudgery towards others.

_Kaiser_

166man wrote: »

Delighted. If you can sign up to a €50k PCP then you'd want to be able to afford the fuel to run it.

Laughable people spending €40-€50k on a car and being worried about a few cent rise in the price of fuel. Especially when it's spewing foul emissions out the back.

Meanwhile I'll pay the value of my car in motor tax alone every year. IMO current motor tax rates under €750 on the new system should be doubled.

Oh please.. the whiff of "I want to run my old big-engined petrol car for the same money as a 520d" is overwhelming :rolleyes: (and I say that as someone who until a few months back paid over €400 a quarter in motor tax).

First, many of the "cheap tax" cars are almost 10 years old so hardly on PCP finance. Second, the reality is that with a housing crisis (particularly in Dublin), lack of a decent public transport infrastructure, and many people still having to work in the city, they are already spending a fortune in fuel costs every month.

If ya want to complain about people driving diesels where they weren't needed, talk to the TDs who oversaw the tax changes, or the dealers who stopped offering or cut the number of petrol variants for sale.

But increasing the costs of the normal commuter under the guise of healthcare and pollution in a country where our contribution to climate change is a tiny fraction of that from countries like China, is just ridiculous.

mikeecho

You didn't have to be mystic meg to have foreseen this.



An opportunity to increase tax..


Yup, we'll run with that.



Why not make other options cheaper, and leave petrol and diesel as they are.... because it's not an option for a tax grab.

Lpg was taxed to fûck back in the day etc etc.. I'm losing interest, and dinner is almost ready

Marcusm

twin_beacon wrote: »

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/environment/diesel-tax-may-be-increased-in-budget-2018-1.3174780


"Tax on diesel fuel may have to be increased to limit a trend that has seen the number of private cars powered by it rise significantly in recent years, the Department of Finance has warned."

You mean the trend that was encouraged the FF/Green government in 2008?

Would it not be better presented as "the very questionable advantage which diesel fuel currently enjoys as compared to petrol may be rescinded and it may have to survive on the same tax rate as petrol"?

Marcusm

neris wrote: »

that 15 cent is a big increase if your filling up 400-1000 litres at a time and have a fleet of trucks on the road.

Just as a special VAT regime applies to diesel so a special duty arrangement could apply if it was felt necessary.

Cerebrum

As expected.

EpiAir conference 2013 in Brussels said "over half of the new vehicles registered in 2012 in Europe were diesels". Perfect time to shaft them all.

10 years ago the incentive was a 50% VRT rebates on new flex fuel vehicles.
Nice clean fuel and all that.
Then a couple of years later they decided to tax the nuts off E85 bioethanol so that it wasn't worth buying at the pumps any more.

If this ever had anything to do with air quality and not milking the motorist for cash, hell would be Carbon Monoxide free.

https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/motors/ireland-should-take-ethanol-more-seriously-1.1199701

cros13

grogi wrote: »

I basically don't agree with the increased duty on diesel - because that is only penalising those who complied with the government previous policies. Revised VRT rates would control the new/imported market better.

Exactly. They need to stop making the problem worse by adding even more combustion cars to the road, especially given the majority will be worth next to nothing in the next 5 - 10 years.

In particular signposting the changes well in advance would be valuable.

Start with VRT rates on non-EVs: hike them 10% per band per year for 10 years and add 5% extra for diesels.
Scrap the hybrid VRT credit too and leave the PHEV and EV credits to expire or phase out progressively at the dates currently set (2022 for EVs and 2019 for PHEVs).

Every combustion car on the road is a financial time bomb if they don't get the market ready for the change and get depreciation on petrol and diesels to rise to reflect that.
The flood of second hand combustion cars from other markets as the city emissions bans, tax hikes and disincentives kick in won't help matters.

dmc17

Ubbquittious wrote: »

Of course. Get everyone to do something and once they're comfortable and dependent on doing said thing tax them for it. Herd all the sheep into a cattle crush and then start bating them with sticks !

They shot the sheep who refused to get into the cattle crush

CJhaughey

cros13 wrote: »

Exactly. They need to stop making the problem worse by adding even more combustion cars to the road, especially given the majority will be worth next to nothing in the next 5 - 10 years.

In particular signposting the changes well in advance would be valuable.

Start with VRT rates on non-EVs: hike them 10% per band per year for 10 years and add 5% extra for diesels.
Scrap the hybrid VRT credit too and leave the PHEV and EV credits to expire or phase out progressively at the dates currently set (2022 for EVs and 2019 for PHEVs).

Every combustion car on the road is a financial time bomb if they don't get the market ready for the change and get depreciation on petrol and diesels to rise to reflect that.
The flood of second hand combustion cars from other markets as the city emissions bans, tax hikes and disincentives kick in won't help matters.

And once there is a sufficient number of EV's on the road, what happens then?
Tax for EV's goes up to 500+ pa and there is special tax applied to Batteries used in road vehicles or some other such nonsensical argument.

cros13

CJhaughey wrote: »

And once there is a sufficient number of EV's on the road, what happens then?
Tax for EV's goes up to 500+ pa and there is special tax applied to Batteries used in road vehicles or some other such nonsensical argument.

Well EVs already pay a lot of tax. Road Tax (€120), VRT & VAT (the credit & grant didn't even cover half the tax on my primary EV), Excise Duty and VAT on electricity.

As for their plan, TII and Revenue had studies commissioned (as early as 2010) into satellite road pricing. So you'd pay per km with rates differing by road type, pay more for motorways etc...

What I laid out was very balanced from a revenue perspective. Doubling combustion VRT over 10 years, effectively increasing taxes on EVs over 7-8 years by €10,000, PHEVs by €7500 + the VRT hike over 3-5 years and €1,500 + the VRT hike for hybrids (equalising their tax treatment with other non-plugins).

Falcon L

I hate the attitude that comes with these types of threads. People are "delighted" that the tax is being raised on something. FFS, the arsewipes that run this country must be laughing at us hard bitten taxpayers. Tax one sector this time and the other sector will be delighted. Later, tax the delighted sector and the people in the first round will be delighted. We are a strange people to allow this to happen time and again.:mad:

cros13

Falcon L wrote: »

hard bitten taxpayers.

Well now that's not quite true. Even when GDP/GNP is accounted for we're not too far off this:



I'm taxpayer as well BTW, hit by the highest rates too. And I've paid tax in several countries on that chart, Ireland has a comparatively low tax load and we get low quality public services because of it.

Anyways... that's getting a bit OT.

bazz26

cros13 wrote: »

Exactly. They need to stop making the problem worse by adding even more combustion cars to the road, especially given the majority will be worth next to nothing in the next 5 - 10 years.

In particular signposting the changes well in advance would be valuable.

Start with VRT rates on non-EVs: hike them 10% per band per year for 10 years and add 5% extra for diesels.
Scrap the hybrid VRT credit too and leave the PHEV and EV credits to expire or phase out progressively at the dates currently set (2022 for EVs and 2019 for PHEVs).

Every combustion car on the road is a financial time bomb if they don't get the market ready for the change and get depreciation on petrol and diesels to rise to reflect that.
The flood of second hand combustion cars from other markets as the city emissions bans, tax hikes and disincentives kick in won't help matters.

Haven't we been down this road 10 years ago with the co2 emission system which pushed people to buy diesel cars in their droves due to the incentive of cheaper VRT and motor tax?

What you are suggesting is do the same again in the form of penalising ICE owners and push them towards cheaper EVs. Get everyone to buy EVs and then what? The Government are not going to sit by and watch their revenue stream trickle away from the motorist who has turned to EVs, they will push higher taxes onto the EV motorist whether it be via VRT, VAT, tariffs on electricity or some other made up tax and it will be justified under the banner of whatever popular belief will be floating around at that time.

cros13 wrote: »

Well EVs already pay a lot of tax. Road Tax (€120), VRT & VAT (the credit & grant didn't even cover half the tax on my primary EV), Excise Duty and VAT on electricity.

So do the ICE cars and they don't qualify for grants or rebates either. The Government already cream excise duty and vat on petrol and diesel fuel too.

Imo these schemes are about generating revenue, not reducing costs for motorists or saving the world.

honeybear

Thought Conor Faughnan discussed this issue very well on Drivetime this evening

Falcon L

cros13 wrote: »

Well now that's not quite true. Even when GDP/GNP is accounted for we're not too far off this:

I'm taxpayer as well BTW, hit by the highest rates too. And I've paid tax in several countries on that chart, Ireland has a comparatively low tax load and we get low quality public services because of it.

Anyways... that's getting a bit OT.

Low quality? Are you fricken serious? The services we have are atrocious! The waste and inefficiency in our health service management is leading to people dying on trollies. But sure, fire away and introduce a new or expanded tax to fuel the inefficiency. Anything but fix the actual problems.

A great little country to grow old in? I don't think so.

Sleeper12

It's that time of year. They try scare the siht out of us between now and the budget. Then we breathe a sigh of relief when they only implement some of this stuff.
Already this is week we had talk of taxing our homes.

cros13

bazz26 wrote: »

Haven't we been down this road 10 years ago with the co2 emission system which pushed people to buy diesel cars in their droves due to the incentive of cheaper VRT and motor tax?

What you are suggesting is do the same again in the form of penalising ICE owners and push them towards cheaper EVs. Get everyone to buy EVs and then what?

Well they need to anyway, because at some point in the next 13 years effectively all new car sales will need to be EV. And some day between now and then there'll be a collective realisation that every combustion car has had unanticipated and massive devaluation.
Ireland won't have a choice about any of that, even if policies remained the same in 15 years no carmaker will be making combustion vehicles for the EU market.

The choices are soft landing (increased incentive to switch early) or hard landing (stranded assets). The "choice" of doing nothing and expecting past performance to be an indicator of future performance, so to speak, is opting for hard landing by default.

bazz26 wrote: »

The Government are not going to sit by and watch their revenue stream trickle away from the motorist who has turned to EVs, they will push higher taxes onto the EV motorist whether it be via VRT, VAT, tariffs on electricity or some other made up tax and it will be justified under the banner of whatever popular belief will be floating around at the time.

Correct, Dept of Finance has been preoccupied by that fact for a long time. It's one of the reasons the VRT exemption that EVs used to have was replaced in 2012 by a credit with a finite end date. And there are a few plans including satellite road pricing, more barrier-free tolling and vehicle weight taxes.

bazz26 wrote: »

So do the ICE cars and they don't qualify for grants or rebates either. The Government already cream excise duty and vat on petrol and diesel fuel too.

Fuel excise duty isn't remotely enough to cover the costs combustion vehicles place on the country in terms of balance of trade and (soon) fines for not hitting emissions targets.

screamer

OSI wrote: »

I don't think that's really fair to say. The vast majority of diesels on the road aren't being driven by people that just signed up to a 50k finance deal. Remember the first of the "cheap tax" diesels will be hitting 10 years old now, so a significant number of people with older second hand cars will be affected.
.

Just doing to the post 2008 cars what they did to the pre2008 cars 9 years ago. TBF pre 2008 cars are unsellable because of high tax even though the same cars post 2008 were unfairly granted cheaper tax. Anyways they're losing money hand over fist and it's time for the government to start turning the screw to milk the motorists again.

TheRiverman

I would like to hear Eamon Ryan or any other green person,if they still exist explain what improvement the carbon tax that was introduced when they were in Government with Fianna Fail has made to the environment.Surely it should have obliterated "climate change" and made our lungs immortal by now:rolleyes:

bazz26

Well in my opinion there are a lot of lofty claims being made in the last few months from both car manufacturers and governments. Both economical and political landscapes can change significantly in the next decade or two.

As I said in another thread, ICE technology is probably coming to the end of it's development so manufacturers need the next big ticket to keep consumerism going and Governments need new ways of introducing tax. So nothing better than planting the seed now to get people used to the idea and watch it grow and be embraced over time so that the concept hopefully turns to reality. Reminds me of the space race during the 1960s where they promised there would be people living on the moon by the turn of the 21st century.

bazz26

TheRiverman wrote: »

I would like to hear Eamon Ryan or any other green person,if they still exist explain what improvement the carbon tax that was introduced when they were in Government with Fianna Fail has done for the environment.Surely it should have obliterated "climate change" and made our lungs immortal by now:rolleyes:

He was on the news the other week saying that excise duty on diesel should be raised to help shift people away from buying diesel cars. He must have memory loss of the last 10 years so as it was him and his shower of green gombeens who fuelled (excuse the pun) the drive to buy diesels through low emission incentives.

cros13

bazz26 wrote: »

Well in my opinion there are a lot of lofty claims being made in the last few months from both car manufacturers and governments. Both economical and political landscapes can change significantly in the next decade or two.

I think it will be quicker than those claims. It looks like EV batteries will hit the the 2030 price/kWh targets (be cheaper to buy than combustion cars) from about 2022/2023.
We've seen battery prices drop by over 80% in the 6 years from 2010 to 2016. And between mid-2016 and now we've seen a further ~$30/kWh drop.

People have often made the mistake of saying that the "technology" of EVs is improving when it's really the economics.
It was perfectly possible to build something not far off a Tesla Model S in the late 90s/early 00s... just not at a price anyone would buy it.
The kick in scale in lithium ion battery manufacturing from a few factors including smartphones, combined with Tesla using that to give the market a push is the real reason EVs are hitting the road now in force.

Tesla has the Model 3 coming off the production line now with 500km of real world range for $44k and ~360km for $35k with panasonic projecting breakeven on the battery cells by the end of Q4 2017 / beginning of Q1 2018 and Tesla projecting achieving the 25% target per-unit margin in mid-2018.

Jaguar has the I-Pace with 400km range coming for the 181 reg (the Jaguar dealerships in Dublin already have people out this month for training on it) at roughly similar prices to the F-Pace... but with more power, more cabin space and 10X lower running costs.

Audi has the e-Tron SUV... again ~90kWh pack which they are already taking deposits on in Norway since the beginning of the year.

Hyundai/Kia have the electric Kona/Niro & Stonic SUVs coming around 181/182 reg with 300-350km range and a mid €30k price in Ireland.

The only thing slowing EVs down is that for next 3-4 years we have a bottleneck of battery manufacturing capacity.
We're also starting to see 2nd hand EV values of certain models in some markets appreciate rather than depreciate due to limited supply of 2nd hand cars and increased demand.

So yeah, at some point we're going to have a soft landing or a hard landing with the 2nd hand combustion vehicle market....
...and to limit the economic and social impact we need as few new combustion cars as possible hitting the road.

The easiest and most immediate way to do that is with transaction taxes on vehicle purchase like VRT, whereas raising the excise duty is more likely to get people's backs up and have the mildest of effects on combustion vehicle headline sales and sales composition.

People choose to buy a new ICE car, people with ICE vehicles are forced to purchase combustion fuel in order to use their asset and travel anywhere.

Grueller

Ubbquittious wrote: »

Of course. Get everyone to do something and once they're comfortable and dependent on doing said thing tax them for it. Herd all the sheep into a cattle crush and then start bating them with sticks !

Sheep would get out of a cattle crush too easily. Maybe that's why there are so many with no tax?

Car manufacturers might stop making ice powered cars after 2030 but I imagine there will still be petrol and diesel for sale.

LPG might kick off again too.

Car manufacturers might stop making ice powered cars after 2030 but I imagine there will still be petrol and diesel for sale.

LPG might kick off again too.

grogi

Augeo wrote: »

Car manufacturers might stop making ice powered cars after 2030 but I imagine there will still be petrol and diesel for sale.

LPG might kick off again too.

Adding LPG instalation to a modern turbo charged engines with direct fuel injection is doable, but prohibitively expensive...

grogi

grogi wrote: »

Adding LPG instalation to a modern turbo charged engines with direct fuel injection is doable, but prohibitively expensive...

No doubt.
However ole style injection lumps like the 1.4 Fiat t-jet are sold new with it in some countries.

Ole lumps on LPG would pass stringent emissions testing so manufacturers could easily churn out factory LPG cars.

V8 Lexus, silky smooth straight 6 BMWs etc ............ not likely of course.