Time to abolish outdated car tax system(s)

saabsaab · 19-09-2021 9:46pm #1

Time to replace the various systems with more sensible options. Add cost to fossil fuels and bring in ULEZ as in the UK.

19-09-2021 9:59pm

Tie to hp of car ? Or initial price? Let the expensive pay. But I guess you want people who can't afford new to carry burdens

saabsaab · 19-09-2021 10:01pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117913008#Comment_117913008

Those wouldn't make sense. Let the polluter pay more. You can be sure if the UK do it we will follow eventually

Nekarsulm · 19-09-2021 10:04pm

It'll have to change as more and more of us buy hybrids or full electric cars.

Easy to link to motor output.

Probably leave it basically the same for petrol/diesels, just keep upping the rates for each band till folk abandon them.

Because there's no way Govt are going to tolerate the loss of revenue on diesel/petrol AND have people paying almost nothing on their electric models.

bazz26 · 19-09-2021 10:08pm

Oh look who's back, same type thread started around this time every year just before the budget. Time to beat a new drum.

Strumms · 19-09-2021 10:29pm

You use the road you pay tax. The burden of paying for roads should for the most part be on the user.

we want greener and more environmentally friendly vehicles but...

there should be no tax difference between private vehicles...

between private and commercial vehicles there should be..commercial should pay more, they’ll be using the roads more.

saabsaab · 19-09-2021 10:37pm

Falling as it is on motor tax probably introduce a charge on fossil fuel generated electricity too.

Del2005 · 20-09-2021 8:28am

What they'll do is introduce road charging, because the tax take is going to disappear with EVs, and then it'll be the same as usual. The people who can afford the new cars will get cheap tolls on the roads with cheap charging of their EV while the people who can't afford a new EV will be hit with tolls and taxes.

kaahooters · 20-09-2021 10:06am

do it on the weight of the vehicle, its the only thing that can work with evs fairly, and its going to have to go up to cover the loss of revenue from tax on fuel.

itll end up about €1200 a year to tax any car.

goochy · 20-09-2021 10:34am

get rid of €2,400 road tax , cap it at €1200 a year . The highest level should go down to about €600 after 10 years ( provided only certain mileage done annually ) and then capped at about €300 after 20 years. Sick of people not buying nice cars new or used because of road tax.

teediddlyeye · 20-09-2021 10:39am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117913022#Comment_117913022

Ah, the lad that gets his petrol for free is back!

"Let the polluter pay" can someone please find the worlds brightest minds to come here and explain how this is not already the case?

Wind up merchant.

AndyBoBandy · 20-09-2021 10:45am

It should be tied to mileage/usage... so therefore applied at the pump, with a nominal upfront fee of €50-€100 per year for the disc, and then everything else is applied at the pump. Rewards those driving EV's/Hybrids, or just driving very little, and penalises the heavy users.

I just paid €710 to tax our 2006 2.0 Diesel that's only done 600km in the last 12 months, yet someone in the same 2.0 diesel, albeit a few years newer pays less than half of what I pay, and could be doing 50,000 km per year.

accensi0n · 20-09-2021 10:51am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117914214#Comment_117914214

I'm with this guy.

As a driver who drivers f*ck all. =)

Furze99 · 20-09-2021 11:02am

Need a decent car tax on all these EVs to help pay for the development of all the infrastructure required to sustain them. Never mind the environmental vandalism involved in battery production and end of life treatment. Add in the massive costs both moneywise and environmental of developing and maintaining wind farms.

There's no such thing as a free lunch.

If you want to save the planet, give up yer cars of whatever type and go back to the bike or shanks mare.

bazz26 · 20-09-2021 11:10am

If you are doing **** all driving then maybe you need to re-think about do you actually need a car and look into alternatives instead of expecting others to subsidize your life choices. These days people seem to see car ownership as a right, it's not a right, it's a privilege that comes with associated costs. The polluter is already paying, the more they drive the more they have to fill up at the pump which fuel is already heavily taxed. Of course the whingers who take their car out of the shed once every couple of months to blow out the cobwebs just want a special free pass. If you have a car you only use infrequently then declare it off the road when it's not being used meaning you don't have to tax it when it's off the road.

Quin_Dub · 20-09-2021 11:18am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117914214#Comment_117914214

Whilst "Polluter pays" makes sense , the political complications are extensive.

The Government needs the money from Motor tax but as more people shift to newer/electric cars the tax take is declining.

If you move to a "charge per km" approach - How do you do it?

Removing all Motor taxes and shifting all of that revenue to the price of a litre of fuel would add to the cost massively - I've seen some suggestions that it might add 50 or 60 cent a litre to the price at the pump.

Does everybody pay the same rate or do you have a different rate based on carbon output?

e.g. Does the Person driving a 4L V8 pay the same rate as the person driving the Hybrid or driving a modern 1L city car?

What impact does availability of Public Transport have?

A shift to a "per KM" charge would definitely impact Rural , non Dublin people far more so TD's outside Dublin would push back pretty hard on flat rates with no concessions for access to Public transport etc.

If you make that change and huge numbers of people shift to EV's , that's great for the environment , but then the revenue drops off massively. So , how do you get money from the EV user?

Do you leave Motor tax in place (at an increased rate) for EV's but shift all ICE vehicles to the "pay per use" model?

Environmental concerns are obviously extremely important , the Government needs to retain the income stream while not massively pissing off significant segments of voters.

Hard to see how they balance those 3 things effectively.

JimmyVik · 20-09-2021 11:20am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117913032#Comment_117913032

Oh thats coming.

My company is doing work with a company who are researching ways for governments to collect motor tax when EVs have a significant effect on the take.

The front runner seems to be that all EVs will be required to have a meter in them (pretty sure all the ones sold here already have this capability already). You pay the tax based on the elecectricity consumption of the car. eg tax of 5c per kwh delivered to the car. They can then multip[ly that by the "luxuriousnous" of the car for you.

Either it gets automatically uploaded to a central database, or you submit it every month / year or whatever works best and it gets tallied at your NCT or MOT or whatever.

By the time EVs take over a system such as that will already be in place.

Pomodoro · 20-09-2021 11:21am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117914331#Comment_117914331

I think the people doing a lot of driving are the ones who need to look into alternatives instead of expecting the environment to continue to take the hit for their life choices.

(Of course its not that simple, but we can all go around berating people for their "life choices")

cruizer101 · 20-09-2021 11:42am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117914331#Comment_117914331

I do very little mileage but still need a car on a regular basis declaring of the road is not at all practical.

The fairest way is a standard rate across all cars and then pay be fuel used, high powered/big car you will pay more per mile driven.

EV's do complicate matters but as Jimmy has said there will be ways to meter usage on them and pay accordingly.

bazz26 · 20-09-2021 11:51am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117914373#Comment_117914373

I doubt many people are doing a lot of driving through choice but rather through necessity. People have to move further away from their place of work because they cannot afford to pay excessive rent or mortgages in large urban areas. Public transport is also practically non existent in rural Ireland so what alternatives do you suggest? Village car pooling like what Sleepy Ryan suggested?

Quin_Dub · 20-09-2021 11:54am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117914462#Comment_117914462

That still doesn't address the political aspects of the Urban/Rural divide.

A rural dweller could reasonably put forward the argument that they drive further and have limited options to avoid said increased distances due to the lack of viable alternative modes of transport etc.

Of course there's the "Well that's the penalty of you choosing to live out in the sticks" rebuttal arguments - For which the response might be "Well it's the only place I can afford to buy or where there are houses available" etc.

Bottom line though , the political challenges of making a change like this are significant - There's also the inflationary impact as fuel cost is part of the index of items used to calculate National inflation rates and I don't believe that Motor tax currently impacts that calculation.

AndyBoBandy · 20-09-2021 12:03pm

If you move to a "charge per km" approach - How do you do it?

Just on this point. once a car is 4 years old, it gets bi-annual NCT tests, which records the odometer reading, and once the cars get a few years older, its recorded annually. So any sort of tax per km system, would use this data to apply the tax for the upcoming year, which could be counted in 5,000km increments.. lowest band being 0km - 5,000km, then 5,001 - 10,000km etc with no upper limit.. then if your mileage increases/decreases from 1 year to the next, it's weighted into the coming years tax band calculation.

A distance based tax system, that catches all from ICE to Hybrid to full BEV, and catches them all equally.

Quin_Dub · 20-09-2021 1:06pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117914569#Comment_117914569

So new cars get a free ride and everyone buying cars on PCP never pays motor tax ever again as they swap out the cars every 3 years typically?

I can see the headlines already - "Low/Middle class earners take the hit yet again!!!!"

I know it's just a suggestion from you so not having a dig , but the reality is that this is going to be very difficult and extremely contentious no matter what they do.

Del2005 · 20-09-2021 1:33pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117914569#Comment_117914569

An ANPR system, prepaying for km's or a box/app that lets you pay as you go. ANPR would cost a lot to implement and let people use rural roads without paying, pre paying would involve the Gardaí having to check, the app/box is already being used by insurance and has the added benefit of being able to catch some other offences.

AndyBoBandy · 20-09-2021 1:34pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117914812#Comment_117914812

No. New cars will pay for an assumed annual mileage of say 20,000 km (or whatever the stats say is the average), however if you want, and if you drive less than the average of 20,000km, you can report your annual mileage. perhaps via the NCT centres... guy comes out, confirms reg/VIN, looks at your odometer, inputs it into the database..

Then anyone returning a PCP car after 4 years who hasn't volunteered the odometer reading each year, if the car has less than 80,000km on it, they get a refund, if car has more than 80,000, they get a bill.

kaahooters · 20-09-2021 2:31pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117914926#Comment_117914926

how do you know that the millage was on irish roads.

teediddlyeye · 20-09-2021 2:35pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117914214#Comment_117914214

Someone doing 49,400km more than you is paying far far more than you in total with fuel duty.

Why do peole want to increase the difference even more?

Strumms · 20-09-2021 2:42pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117914569#Comment_117914569

So once you have a four year old car you have an NCT done twice a year? Ehhh no. The cost of having enough centers and enough staff not to mention the running costs would be astronomical, astonishing...

Quin_Dub · 20-09-2021 3:16pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117915434#Comment_117915434

Indeed - I can imagine those in the border counties having a field day claiming that most of their mileage was completed outside the state and therefore no subject to the tax.

Bottom line here, there really isn't a one size fits all solution here that will be politically palatable to a majority.

endacl · 20-09-2021 3:23pm

Couldn’t give a shiny shyte. Tax is a small part of the cost of owning and running a car. I pay 710 a year. Switching in November to a car that’ll cost me 1250 in tax. 2008 model A8, 3 litre diesel. Low mileage. Showroom condition. I should be financing a two year old snoozebox for 300 a month because, ya know....

... chape tax....

SouthWesterly · 20-09-2021 3:49pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117914373#Comment_117914373

What do you suggest?

I'm in the countryside. Have to drive to the local shops, school work etc. No public transport available.

What alternatives can I use?

Time to abolish outdated car tax system(s)

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