I agree, and don't get it either. With what's happening to fuel prices, an annual RFL payment of £300 or £400 is trivial.
The difference in cost between taxing my "gas guzzling" 2.0 Volvo or a nice efficient diesel Golf or similar is basically the equivalent of two tanks of fuel in either car. In the scheme of things over a year's motoring, and with insurance and maintenance costs added in to the equation, it's so small as to be irrelevant.
Cheers
DP
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Somewhere in the £10 a gallon thread the point was made that relatively little of the pump price is oil. The rest is fuel duty and VAT.
So if crude goes up by 10% and the fuel elemnt of the pump price follows we wouldn't be too badly off until the fuel duty and the VAT kick in.
With everything we buy to eat having to be delivered and food prices going up too, I think Darling and Brown have lost the plot raising fuel duties even further now.
I honestly (if naively) think they need to reduce duty to keep the economy going.
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I have to agree totally with you 'oldnotbold'. A friend is thinking of getting a newer car and has a budget of ~£10,000. I am staggered by the timr he spends looking at the CO2 tables with a view to saving a few £10s on road tax. It seems at the moment this has become the overiding factor when the wrong choice could cost you many, many times more in just petrol and depreciation! It's staggering how a couple of news bulletins can affect the nation's thought processes!
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The trouble is raineman HM Govt have introduced bands, extended the bands and are now imposing the new bands retrospectively. No one knows what will happen to tax bands over the time the car is owned and your friend may be taking this into account.
Top tax may be £400 at the moment, in three years time it could be £1,000. That's a lot of cash to find when the reminder comes through the door and for this reason I won't consider a high band car, even if in the grand scheme of things the extra tax is only a few tanks of fuel.
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It amazes me that people see £400 as 'trivial'. On top of the horrendous cost of motoring today, it's daylight robbery as far as I'm concerned.
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It amazes me that people see £400 as 'trivial'
£400 is not trivial on its own, but it is relatively trivial when looking at motoring costs as a whole. But when you consider that it is £180 going up to £400, the sum then to consider is the extra £220. Now people will readily chop and change their cars every 2 or 3 years without batting an eyelid at the "hidden" depreciation costs involved in doing so.
Clearly the Government policy is having its intended impact if such a relatively trivial change is causing people to change their cars down to the lower VED bands.
Note - I do not agree with taxation via VED at all, as I believe that the best way to tax motoring and/or emissions should be through the nozzle at the petrol pump. That way your penalty is directly linked to your consumption.
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jbif - yes, depreciation is the perfect example.
People willingly part-ex perfectly good, serviceable cars with many years reliable service left in them after two or three years, chucking thousands down the toilet as they do so, but will let a £200 VED difference influence the car they choose in the first place. It makes no sense whatsoever.
Of course £400 is a lot of money, and would be a pig to have to find in one month, but it really is inconsequential when taken in context of other motoring costs and depreciation which people fork out without so much as a murmur.
Cheers
DP
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It amazes me that people see £400 as 'trivial'. On top of the horrendous cost of motoring today it's daylight robbery as far as I'm concerned.
It's less than a full set of tyres for the sort of car attracting £400 road tax.s
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"it's less than a full set of tyres for the sort of car attracting £400 road tax.s"
That's ok then........we'll do without our tyres so we can pay the massive tax increase!
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In 3 years time Brown/ Darling won't be in power. You just need to hope the next government will have noticed how unpopular retrospective, punitive tax rises are.
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It still amazes me how few people do all the sums of operating a car when thinking about a change
It doesn't amaze me at all. I put it down partly to the lack of basic arithmetic skills taught in British schools, and the rest due to our simple human minds finding it easy to "penny wise but pound foolish".
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"penny wise but pound foolish".
Speaking as one who was always penny foolish as well as pound idiotic, I think I have a good understanding of this one.
Man wants car. Knows he can't afford to run it really, but avoids doing the maths because that would make it more difficult for him to let himself buy the thing.
Buys car, spends rest of life complaining about cost of fuel, spares, servicing, parking etc.
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Succinctly put Lud! Gives pause to the thought that many of those factors could have been said to be true of my previous choices in women. Current Mrs SS excepted of course. :-I
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My own depreciation over the last 8 years (i.e. as long as I've owned a car) is about 2,500 (£1,500 of which was two cars that were nicked and weren't worth claiming on), so in reality about 1k. 80k...!!! Wow!!!
As I've pointed out before, you can buy for £500 an early Audi A6 quattro 2.8 V6 ten years old. Thirsty? Yup. Cheap? Oh yes.
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"Of course £400 is a lot of money, and would be a pig to have to find in one month, but it really is inconsequential when taken in context of other motoring costs "
I think what this says is that we now just accept punitive taxation. £400 will never be 'inconsequential' to me. The issue is that an awful lot of people bought a 'cheap' car ,to suddenly find this morally corrupt shower who now infest out Government have retrospectively made it a very expensive car.
(And just a reminder, we're already heavily taxed at the pumps)
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I think what this says is that we now just accept punitive taxation. £400 will never be 'inconsequential' to me.
Well if that's what comes across, I have completely mis-typed my intentions. I don't accept it, but I acknowledge I cannot change it, and that no party likely to replace this shower will do anything differently. The global warming bandwagon is far too lucrative these days.
That said, I still can't believe there is anyone who changes a new car every three years who can hand on heart say that RFL going from £205 to £400 causes them genuine hardship. More than ten times that goes down the pan the second they drive their new car off the forecourt.
Cheers
DP
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£400 is enough to buy a car; or less than a whole decent suit; or RFL for a year. Funny old world.
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The issue is that an awful lot of people bought a 'cheap' car ,to suddenly find this morally corrupt shower who now infest out Government have retrospectively made it a very expensive car.
Alot of taxes act retrospectively, not only car related ones - think of all the laws & regulations relating to fiscal matters, pensions, excise duties etc. Situations change & so do taxation laws. Not sure people who buy old bangers can complain about being taxed the same about similarly polluting cars as those of new buyers - it would be a bit unfair otherwise.
The central point about depressed prices being offered by car dealers (or car guide prices) on p/ex values of older, less fuel efficient cars, should provide opportunity (..and food for thought!) for those considering replacing their car. I'm sure the savvy buyer who doesn't care about 'image' will find plenty of bargains, as the market (and perhaps more importantly, people's perceptions of it) invariably over-shoot in the negative direction.
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£400 is by itself not a lot of money:
BUT
Many people are or were on fixed rate mortages: say £150k at 4%.
New rate is 6%. Extra cost £3,000 pa
Food prices are rising at least 10%pa. Average weekly spend £100.. another £500 pa.
Council tax inflation 4%. Around £70pa.
Fuel costs: 10% pa. Another £150-£200.
And so on.
Add it all up and you are looking at cost rises excluding VED of nearly £4,000 for some people.
And that's out of taxed income.. so around £80 per week
That's how people lose their houses etc...
Never mind you can rely on the Government to help.. and increase taxes!
Edited by madf on 16/04/2008 at 16:36
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But as soon as you express an interest at a dealer for one of these cars they'll suddenly become highly desirable gentleman's carriages that every one wants.
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madf - totally agree with you, and would add gas and electricity prices to that list as well. I'm not arguing that living costs are becoming daft.
We run our household expenditure (excluding fuel) out of a single account, which means we can keep accurate track of how our living costs run month to month. It is a straight fact that the amount we have to put into that account each month to cover day to day living costs has increased by 30% in the past 12 months alone, and it's still increasing.
But inflation is still at 2.9%. How that works, I don't know. I do know that I am significantly poorer than this time last year, and that's without £75 to fill my car with fuel or £300 to tax it from next year.
DP
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>DP
Agreed. We have installed a purchasing policy which goes like this:
Never buy any commonly used item -which can be stored - at list price.
When it is available at discount buy however many you think you will need until it comes on discount again.Some own brands are better than named.
This requires some research. BUT if you have competing supermarkets as we have within 10 miles (Asda, Morrisons, Tesco,. Somerfield Aldi and Lidl) it simplifies shopping as you only buy things when discounted..
Simple examples: Washing powder, toilet and kitchen rolls, beans, sauces etc.
We aim for an average 20% saving on every shopping bill. But achieve about 17%.
Ditto fuel.
Shop around for energy . And broadband..
etc.
Throw nothing usable away. Use Freecycle. (we have a lovely free deep freeze).
Some things are uncontrollable.. But car running costs are.
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I saw all this in 1973-74 with the then oil crisis. You could not give away Granadas or Jags for love or money..
PS oil has hit a record high today just under $114. I expect the short term top at $126 to $128 ish..
For Mr Brown to suggest it will get better is reliant on better harvests for food, a solution to Iraq pdq (to increase oil output) and a reduction in Chinese and Indian demand for oil and food. And a lot of luck.
I'd bet on pigs flying first.
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>>PS oil has hit a record high today just under $114. I
Well, yeah but... no but. As the USD has depreciated against the Euro over the last 12 months by what? 20-25%? That suggests in Euro terms (no help to us as we have followed the dollar down) 80-90 USD.
The record price is more a measure of the dollar's weakness than oil inflation.
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And investors looking to make a quick buck.
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And investors looking to make a quick buck.
If only it was that easy.
The record price is more a measure of the dollar's weakness than oil inflation.
Partly true if you are looking at it from the Euro zone. Many of the rest of the world currencies tend to track the dollar.
you can buy for £500 an early Audi A6 quattro 2.8 V6 ten years old £400 is enough to buy a car;
Yup. And then run them in to the ground. That is the way to go to minimise your depreciation losses. I would not be surprised to find that midlifecrisis takes quite a hit on depreciation; perhaps he pays a lot more for newish or nearly-new cars, and then changes them within 3 years of ownership.
I do not like the present Government's tax policies, and neither did I vote for them.
We have what we have, and so we have to make "lifestyle choices" to live within the constraints they impose on us. Give up fags, give up booze, give up gas-guzzlers, or follow Mapmaker's and Madf's examples on how to live within our means. Or follow Pugugly's example and put up our fees to captive [as in avoiding jail?] clients.
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The point is I made a choice about the depreciation when I bought my car. I accepted it. It's the fact that just about every car is now classed as a 'Gas Guzzler' (how I hate that term).
People made choices when they bought their 1.6 Vx Meriva, perhaps on a tight budget. As that car has now been declared a 'guzzler', they're screwed. They were living within their means...they're probably not now.
(You have probably deduced my opinion of shower we've got 'Governing' (I use the word loosely) us at the moment)
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midlifecrisis:
Which 1.6 Vx Meriva derivative are you referring to?
For example for these ones:
www.parkers.co.uk/cars/road-tax/?deriv=35287,
www.parkers.co.uk/cars/road-tax/?deriv=33253
the VED goes up from current £145 to £175 next year and then to £180 in 2010. So that is £35 a year extra.
and for this one: www.parkers.co.uk/cars/road-tax/?deriv=25286
the VED goes up from current £210 to £260 next year and then to £270 in 2010. So that is £60 a year extra.
I would think that £1.20 a week extra, (=20p extra max per day) is hardly enough to "screw" someone.
Bigger engine cars such as the 2.2 litre and 2.5 litre cars such as the Vectra petrol 2.2i Direct SRi and the BMW 525i M Sport go up from £170 to £300.
www.parkers.co.uk/cars/road-tax/?deriv=31757
www.parkers.co.uk/cars/road-tax/?deriv=36387
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Is it the Auto version? They are usually more polluting...
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It's the rise to £270. I guess it's a personal opinion, but I consider £270 to tax a Meriva outrageous.
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Tax via VED bands has been the way forward since it was introduced in 2001, so it should come as no surprise what the Gov are doing - its been on the cards for years, the only two things that continue to surprise me are firstly that it took them so long to start hammering the top bands, and secondly the continuous moaning we are hearing about them doing it....
Edited by b308 on 16/04/2008 at 19:56
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I daresay that if you took a diesel in to part exchange, there'd be a sucking in of breath, and comments along the lines of "Have you seen the price of diesel these days, no one will touch them, and these common rails are nothing but trouble...."
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" these common rails are nothing but trouble...."
Only if the car in question is:
Guess it.
A Mondeo TDCI...
:-)
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I'm not letting SWMBO know about this thread, what she thinks about car salesmen would be automatically deleted, and get me banned too.
Hope no one's under the impression Dave is going to do anything different (is he still leader of the opposition? I use the terms loosely)
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