After a discussion at work today I feel that maybe I as a motorcycle owner (as well as a car owner) am being shortchanged by the Chancellor's adjustments to the VED banding or if you prefer - the price of the tax disc on your motor.
My theory is based upon these facts. I own a 2003 model 599cc motorcycle which for that priviledge I have to pay £47 per year road tax. All motorcycle tax discs are related to the cc and fall into different bands and my bike is in the 401-600cc category. Now compare this to a workmate's sons Ford Fiesta. He has a newish 1400cc diesel powered car and his tax banding (B) had just been reduced down to £35 per year in the latest budget.
Is it correct that my bike is more environmentally unfriendly than a 1400cc diesel engined car? I somehow doubt it, and when you consider the other issues such as the associated wear and tear on the road surface that a car produces in relation to a bike, how can the Chancellor justify charging bikers more than some car drivers?
Does anyone else have any thoughts on this matter?
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What's your MPG, Simon? Don't forget that your horrid greasy motorbike will tear stones out of the road surface, due to its frightful and quite possibly dangerous power-to-weight ratio, which we won't talk about, as it might embarrass us, as well as rip up the surface with its pegs should you decide to lay it down, when it will demolish traffic lights and speed cameras while you slide along on your bum (if I may say that), removing still more of the Taxpayer's hard payed-for road surface. It's also quite possibly faster than the Chancellor's car, the rotten oily smoke-emitting noisy thing that it is.
Oh, alright, Officer, I'll come quietly. What? Yes, that's right, I rode a motorbike for 20 years before e'er I had a car...
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Is it correct that my bike is more environmentally unfriendly than a 1400cc diesel engined car? I somehow doubt it, and when you consider the other issues such as the associated wear and tear on the road surface that a car produces in relation to a bike, how can the Chancellor justify charging bikers more than some car drivers?
It sounds hard to justify, but do you know the emissions figures for your bike? At a guess, they are probably much lower than the car, but it'd be interesting to compare.
I suspect, though, that the low car tax bands are a sort of temporary special offer, designed to encourage manufacturers and buyers to move to lower-emissions cars. That's more-or-less what happened with the Euro IV diesels: the removal of the diesel surcharge for the BIK tax calculation was a temporary measure designed to encourage early adoption of the Euro IV standard.
In five or six years time, when a high proportion of cars are in Bands A+B, I expect they'll cease to be the cheap categories, and new lower bands may be created to qualify for discounts.
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Whenever there are rules there will always be someone who thinks they are unfair. However, the rules are the rules, and (unfortunately) they can't be tailored to suit every individual.
--
L\'escargot.
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Speaking as a motorcyclist I have to say that a 600cc 4 cyl bike would struggle to match the average economy of a 1400cc TD car, furthermore it is only from this year that bikes have had to comply with Euro III (Euro II from 2003) when cars are on Euro IV.
It is technically much more of a challenge on a bike for packaging reasons, personally I think bikes should have been allowed to stay at Euro II and that a lot of time effort and carbon has been wasted in developing complex electronics and catalysts enabling Euro III compliance, what percentage of global CO2 is down to motorcycles, probably something like 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
0001%
!
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some people on this forum would still wish you to downgrade to a 125cc.........safe in the knowledge they'd kept their 400
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You could argue that at 13p a day, if you're worried about it go and pick that much up off the pavement :)
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>>It sounds hard to justify, but do you know the emissions figures for your bike? At a guess, they are probably >>much lower than the car, but it'd be interesting to compare.
No I don't know the emissions figures as they don't seem to be widely publiciced with bike literature etc. As for economy, I can't quote you exact figures but a rough estimate is around 45mpg on my bike, so not that much worse than the 1400cc diesel Fiesta we are comparing it to.
As for why bike tax is so expensive in comparison to a car (as in this case) maybe it has something to do with bikes not being liked as such by the government. I mean bikes make the accident and death on the roads statistics look bad and if the government were to discourage motorcycles then theoretically it would make their figures look better. In a similar vein to the 4x4 brigade, they are currently being targetted by the government and they are using the high tax situation as a way of discouraging their use/ownership.
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there are considerably less bike owners than car owners.......govt will tax you on what they think they can get away with votes wise.......hence this green invasion.......they realise that people are worried about our planet, so they can jump on the tax band wagon for the bigger vehicles as we'll wear it.......the fact that they won't spend much of the extra on green issues at all they hope we won't notice
same as road tax doesn't all go on roads...in fact far from it
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Never mind the bikes, the same exists with cars. A few years ago I had a Vectra 2.0Di which averaged 56mpg.
SWMBO had a 1.0 Micra which averaged around 35mpg.
Hers was half the price to tax - abnd this was when the price graduation for emissions had come in!
No explanation except they want to raise tax, not save the planet. If they really wanted to reduce motorists co2 emissions they would (among other things) be taxing everything over say 150g co2 at £10k per year. BUT . . . that would cause a drop in tax revenue because the take from these vehicles with high co2 emissions would fall as they were taken off the road.
He does not want to kill the golden goose.
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I'm waiting for the Chancellor to start taxing us on the amount of carbon dioxide we breathe out during the day, based on lung capacity, daily activities and so on, plus on the spot fines for releaseing methane.
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I guess you could try stuffing a local cat down the exhaust pipe to claim a reduction in tax.
BIG
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