Lets axe VRT in Lisbon II

Sherifu wrote: »

Nice use of bold, underlining and colour. Pity it was so long, looks like a nice post.

+1


That post is too long for me to read, can someone sum it up with a humorous lolcat picture?

seandugg wrote: »

not if you are the one leading them sir

Excellently written piece of work op.

Aside from the one or two genunely funny posts, the remainder appear to be quite negative in the traditional boards.ie vein.

Its most likely the case that it was seandugg et al who voted the monkeys back in.

Wud be a progressive move.

Top idea budgie.

AudiChris wrote: »

2) When you reduce the prices of ALL new cars massively (sounds like a good idea) and cause a collapse in the used car values (assets which actual people own), leaving hundreds of thousands of people in negative equity (exposing the lending banks massively), what do you think the eventual consequences will be?

Nothing worthy of note tbh. People will still have to pay off their car loans, which are usually much less than mortgages. Automotive loans are hardly a footnote in comparison to mortgage lending.

As for negative equity, your car loses value the minute you drive it away, its one of the worst assets you can own in terms of equity, literally haemorrhaging money from the day you buy it, so I don't know what you're talking about here.

Do cars increase in value where you come from?

AudiChris wrote: »

I've seen loads of my potential customers extremely disappointed by how much money their trade-ins have lost due to the changes in new car pricing little we are prepared to offer them for their trade-in cars.

Fixed that for you.

AudiChris wrote: »

Firing loads of civil servants won't help things either. The government is the single biggest employer in the country. The best way to prop up the country is by employing MORE people, not less!

Ye gods. Heres a good idea, lets employ everyone in the government! And the taxes to pay for that will come from...er...

Bigger public sector = bad for the economy.

Stick to the used car sales there.

AudiChris wrote: »

Things are f'ed up enough already without more ham-fisted armchair economics.

Indeed.

AudiChris wrote: »

I'm one of the hundreds of car salespeople who stand to lose their jobs due to the massive slowdown in car sales due to the changes in VRT.

Raiser wrote: »

You wouldn't happen to have a vested interest/yacht at stake here AudiChris?

That's some nice detective work there raiser... :rolleyes:

Raiser wrote: »

Hey!!! I have a button here for posters that like to pi$$ €4-5,000 into the wind, I call it my "Idiot" button - but very recently I've had to consider changing it to my "Ignore" button - just to save faith in humanity at large

Yeah, I've been pi$$ing away my salary in taxes and paying 21% too much for goods for years.

Again, what will you replace the billions of Euro of tax revenue with when you abolish VRT?

Raiser wrote: »

This may be so - but I'm not going to believe you until I see a signed letter from the CSO, proof that you can spewost [spew post] unaided and a signed letter from your Mam stating extreme regret over your conception, gestation and sorry, sorry birth.

This is just plain abuse and reflects badly on both you and your arguements.

SimpleSam06 wrote: »

Nothing worthy of note tbh. People will still have to pay off their car loans, which are usually much less than mortgages. Automotive loans are hardly a footnote in comparison to mortgage lending.

True, but it's still the second biggest purchase that most people will make and a significant expense to a lot of people.

SimpleSam06 wrote: »

As for negative equity, your car loses value the minute you drive it away, its one of the worst assets you can own in terms of equity, literally haemorrhaging money from the day you buy it, so I don't know what you're talking about here.

Cars depreciate, that's absolutely true, but due to the changes in VRT some people are facing depreciation of €20k instead of €10k in the last year (taking round figures). Unfortunately the money they borrowed hasn't reduced equally.

My point is that, while most people are aware that a car purchase is an investment in a depreciating asset, they're happy to spend the money because they enjoy the independence and convenience that the car affords them.
Changing the VRT regime alters those sums significantly. It changes those sums AFTER the person has already committed to the purchase and therefore it's unfair to those car owners to make wholesale changes to VRT or abolish it altogether.

SimpleSam06 wrote: »

Do cars increase in value where you come from?

Absolutely not.

SimpleSam06 wrote: »

Fixed that for you.

We base our trade-in values on what we believe we can sell the car for.
If we price them too high, we make a loss.
If we price them too low, we get a reputation for ripping people off and we damage the goodwill that our dealership has (people can look their trade-in up on our website and see what we're charging for it. I'd expect most people do that tbh).
Used car sales is very simple supply and demand economics, the price is set by the buyer, not the seller. We price the trade-ins with that buyer in mind.

SimpleSam06 wrote: »

Ye gods. Heres a good idea, lets employ everyone in the government!

Firing everyone from the civil service is just as poor an idea as hiring everyone into the civil service.

SimpleSam06 wrote: »

And the taxes to pay for that will come from...er...

Employment generates money in the economy, which generates sales of goods, which generates VAT revenue and further employment of salespeople/goods suppliers/hauliers etc. etc.

SimpleSam06 wrote: »

Bigger public sector = bad for the economy.

I'd hazard a guess that inefficient public sector = bad for the economy.

SimpleSam06 wrote: »

Stick to the used car sales there.

Trust me, I'm happier in Motors, I just would hate to see an idea like "let's blackmail the government into abolishing VRT by threatening to vote against Lisbon II" gaining traction.

AudiChris wrote: »

And what VRT has to do with the Lisbon Treaty that we've already voted on, I don't know.

I don't believe people voted against the Lisbon Treaty because of VRT, I think other issues were the hot buttons. Do you not think that it would be a better investment in time to (in the possible event of Lisbon II) address those hot buttons specifically rather than bring in yet another emotive issue to muddy the waters...

Any thoughts on this one?

abolish vrt, and put every solitary cent lost on it onto petrol and diesel prices. we have among the cheapest petrol in the eu, and highest car prices, make the barrier to entry lower and the barrier to frivolous use a lot higher. same with stamp duty, replace with a small council tax paid yearly. neither will happen unless the greens somehow get a majority....

SimpleSam06 wrote: »

Are you seriously telling me people are taking out new motor loans before they have the old one paid off?

This happens all the time, people roll the settlement figure of their old loan into their new loan. In the vast majority of cases their equity in their trade-in is much greater than the settlement figure so there's no issue.

In the case of a massive market realignment due to poorly implemented government policy, then it becomes an issue.

SimpleSam06 wrote: »

Caveat emptor imho.

I don't think Caveat emptor is applicable where a change is implemented by the government that noone really saw coming.
If there's a meteor strike on your house and the insurance company won't pay out because it's an act of God, is it caveat emptor because you should have bought a different house.

I don't think, "tough luck, cars depreciate and taxes are unfair!" is of any consolation to those who have been affected by this change.

SimpleSam06 wrote: »

So you took out a loan which included VRT until your loan is repaid, so you need to keep paying that VRT. However when you trade your car in, the new car you are buying also does not have VRT, for an overall gain. Also you don't get to keep VRT, its a tax, not a profit margin.

You took a loan for €55k for a BMW 520D in the middle of last year. It depreciated €10 in the normal course of events, it depreciated another €8-9k due to the new pricing released this year. Your loan amount has decreased by the standard monthly payments. If you wanted to get out of this car at this stage, you'd be very badly hit in your pocket.
If you're having a particularly hard time and the bank tries to repossess the car, your car won't even be worth close to what you owe.

If you bought a larger 5-Series diesel, you're even harder hit as the market for those cars second hand will shrink considerably as they're a lot more expensive than the 520D now, and people base their values on the base model a lot of the time.

SimpleSam06 wrote: »

No one is talking about firing the entire public sector. Just streamlining it considerably.

ixoy wrote: »

Fire half the civil service - no harm to productivity and we'd have oodles more cash. Everyone's a winner!

I was responding to this kind of quote.

SimpleSam06 wrote: »

Taxation by the government is whats known as leakage, if you have the entire country in the public sector, no one produces anything and your economy collapses in a most spectacular fashion. The private sector drives the economy, the public sector is just the grease in the wheels, the less and more efficient the better, freeing up funds for projects like infrastructure and research. Or it would be, in a perfect world.

I'd love to see the civil/public service being more accountable and more efficient. My friends who work in that world feel the same way. We don't need Lisbon II or VRT changes to bring it about, we need politicans with the conviction to do it.

SimpleSam06 wrote: »

Yeah lisbon had nothing to do with VRT. I was just responding to your comment, as you do.

Sorry, wasn't aiming that at you, more as a general query that I feel we can't ignore. OP, why are we bringing these two issues together at all?