Any hope of allowing VAT to be reclaimed on petrol in the budget?

drunkmonkey

Still can't get my head around why this isn't allowed when Diesel is meant to be bad. Seems like a simple way to cut emissions quickly and start the move away from Diesel.

MetzgerMeister

Diesel is used in trucks, vans etc. all used for business means. Petrol isn't therefore you can't claim VAT back on it.

drunkmonkey

MetzgerMeister wrote: »

Diesel is used in trucks, vans etc. all used for business means. Petrol isn't therefore you can't claim VAT back on it.

Yes but most self employed and business cars all use diesel. Why not allow the 23% off petrol to get them off diesel in normal cars.

MetzgerMeister

So have the VAT reclaimable on both diesel and petrol? Not enough revenue then and it'll have to be made up elsewhere.

drunkmonkey

I was thinking that they would scrap vat on diesel for passenger cars (not jeeps, trucks, estates etc). If you bought a petrol Golf instead or a Diesel you shouldn't be penalised for it which is the current set up.

R.O.R

I was hoping this would be done last year but no mention of it. If the Government are hoping to incentivise people away from Diesel, this is the first step.

Won't be a big Revenue loser for the Government either as most business vehicles are diesel at the moment and reclaiming that VAT. I can't imagine the pool of vehicles that entitled to reclaim VAT, but are currently Petrol, is that huge in Ireland so the only major difference would be people changing from a Diesel to a Petrol or Petrol/Hybrid.

Fingers crossed they make a sensible decision in the budget, and tie it in with a nice low BIK % for low emission vehicles like the 530e and T8 Volvo's.

MetzgerMeister

In 2008 they incentivised people towards diesel and now it's looking like it'll be the opposite. Talk about EU puppeteering!

drunkmonkey

Not going to spell out my math but used the latests statistics on amount of drivers etc, % of business and on fuel alone I think they'll lose 6 million a year if every business switched to petrol in the morning, that number is a little off as it doesn't take into account that petrol cars use more fuel. So they would have extra revenue. There's probably 0 cost to the exchequer on the fuel side based on everyone switching to petrol.

Where they would lose is on the extra vat and vrt on diesel cars as there more expensive. Not going to even attempt to work that one out. That must be the sticking point as I can't think of any other reason they haven't done it already.

redlead

drunkmonkey wrote: »

Still can't get my head around why this isn't allowed when Diesel is meant to be bad. Seems like a simple way to cut emissions quickly and start the move away from Diesel.

Move away to what? Petrol is nearly as bad so there is no chance the government are going to give an incentive to switch to that. You'll need to wait another few years for more EVs to come onto the market before anything like that happens. Even at that EVs won't serve the needs of many.

colm_mcm

The emissions they’re concerned with are CO2 I thought. Petrols are higher than diesel for that.


Not that it makes a blind bit of difference in the grand scheme of things.

porsche boy

MetzgerMeister wrote:

In 2008 they incentivised people towards diesel and now it's looking like it'll be the opposite. Talk about EU puppeteering!

I dont think it was as much EU puppeteering as that fool Eamonn Gormley & his green party agenda. He insisted on alot of what happened with the conversion to co2 based emissions favouring diesels. Interestingly the ev/hev pick up was much bigger in uk & europe due to good logical government incentives but I say the fear of our lot at the time was that it would impact revenue too much if everyone was running ev's.
Either way Gormley is a prat.

porsche boy

colm_mcm wrote:

Not that it makes a blind bit of difference in the grand scheme of things.

When they start taxing cows farts i'll take the co2 thing seriously, until then its just pick on the motorist again

jharr100

porsche boy wrote: »

When they start taxing cows farts i'll take the co2 thing seriously, until then its just pick on the motorist again

Its the belching thats the problem.. Rather than their farts..

https://metro.co.uk/2017/03/25/cow-burps-rather-than-farts-are-destroying-the-earths-atmosphere-6531638/

porsche boy

Your right, i got the wrong end of it.
Anyway, as the article says:


Each dairy cow annually emits between 80 and 120 kg of methane (incidentally, mainly through burping and not farting) which is equivalent to the carbon emissions given off by an average family car over a year.

Based on those figures on average, a cow falls onto the 190 a year tax bracket.

NIMAN

There's currently a 10c difference in petrol v diesel.

I'd like to see them equalised to encourage more petrol cars to be sold.

porsche boy

NIMAN wrote:

There's currently a 10c difference in petrol v diesel.

NIMAN wrote:

I'd like to see them equalised to encourage more petrol cars to be sold.

Well they'd have to drop the petrol, if they raise the diesel haulage companies will go mad.

traco

Vat has been reclaimable for as long as I can remember for business use. It must be well over 25 years so has nothing to do with any recent emissions or the greens policies. I don't know when or why it came in and a quick check on google isn't throwing up any old finance bill. I'd be curious to know why and when it was originally brought in. It could be that back then only HGV's and commercial vehicle were diesel. Back in the 80's the amount of diesel cars were few and far between so it may have been a rudimentary way of dividing the vehicles???

I don't see why they couldn't allow it on petrol once the fuels is used for business purposes in the same way as it applies to diesel. It would make sense but I imagine someone somewhere in the upper echelons of the civil service has some logic as to why it should not be reclaimable.