Yesterday watching the news and the release of all the info that says where out of recession. An economist was saying all the things put in place, quantative easing, bank of England low interest rates, reduced VAT. Then he said the car scrappage scheme. In the next statement they talked about manufacturing and how the scrappage scheme had pushed these figures up.
I don't want to sound pontificating BR's but i and along with Mike Rutherford and many others have said it many times before. The motorists of this country contribute through the taxes they pay about £50 billion a year. Is it us motorists who now keep the country running through the taxes we pay.
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Sorry, Brentus, but you'll have to help me out with the logic there. Manufacturing gets a boost from government subsidies on the purchase of new cars and this proves that taxes on car ownership and use fund the nation?
If we accept Rutherford's 50bn for now - and remember that he's a motoring lobbyist with a vested interest - that's barely £1500 per licence holder. And most will pay a lot less because the loading on fuel means a few heavy users (me included) pay the bulk of this. Do I celebrate when the price of fuel goes up? No, but nor do I swallow this line about the poor, overtaxed 'motorist'.
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We came out of recession by something like 0.1% no doubt the bucketful of taxpayers cash chucked at the scrappage scheme tipped the balance, in other words we are still in recession meanwhile Brown continues to spend our money like water whilst saddling us with even more debt on top of our already record peace-time debt. How many tractors produced this week brother?
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Manufacturing gets a boost from government subsidies on the purchase of new cars
Well, Korean manufacturing at least.
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>>>> Manufacturing gets a boost from government subsidies on the purchase of new cars
>>Well, Korean manufacturing at least.
Remember, "government subsidies" means taxpayer subsidies. HMG takes money from you and me to give it to Korean manufacturers, and this, apparently gets us out of recession.
Funny business, economics.
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A good chunk of the cost of even a imported car stays in the UK. Think about marketing, distributions and sales cost. So a 10k Hyudai costs about 5k from the factory and the rest is cost of selling, much of it in UK employing UK people.
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Quite true, WT.
However, in your example, half the money taken from you and me by the government is still going abroad!
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Goes back to what several of us have said, it should have been a sliding scale... more money for a British produced car, less for EEC and even less for outside EEC...
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I completely agree with your suggestion of a sliding scale, b308, but I think that we wouldn't be allowed to do it under EU rules.
1) The penalties or subsidies to external companies have to be set at EU level, via the Common Tariff, and
2) under the Single European Act you can't give your own companies preferential treatment unless it gets approval from the Commission (unless you are French or Italian).
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I did wonder about that... but surely we could ignore the EU rules like the rest of the EU seem to?!
(And the companies which would "benefit" aren't British either, just have manufacturing base over here!)
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What you mean Fiat, VW, Peugeot and Citroën who have all had "illegal" (under EU rules) help from their respective governments over the last 25 years, meanwhile MG Rover sink for the need of a couple of billion and yet we pour a hundred billion+ to save the fat cats in the banks...
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Ive only posted what i watched on the news. However on the European theme, and having worked with our EU partners, over the years i have noticed how they tend to look after their own. Here is an example.
Next time Citreon do a national advert in the newspapers. We all know Citreon is a French company. Look at the advert in closer detail. You will see the statement ''Citreon prefer Total''. Yep you guessed it Total are a French company. That is one thing i think our British companies should do promote themselves in this way like our EU partners.
Still think British motorists have and continue to do so, help pull us out of recession.
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Do you have any idea what percentage the tax take from motoring is, from the total UK tax revenues? That would give us a much better idea of the motorists contribution and whether the motorist is indeed paying our way out of recession. If the average UK wage is £27k (I think it's something like that) then how much tax is paid? Must be about 20% of £21K which is £4100. Of that average earners remaining money some of his/her spending will incur further taxation (VAT on goods purchased), so the figure increases. I certainly don't pay anything like that in motoring taxes in a year so the assertion appears false. And don't forget not everyone's trading in under the scrappage scheme!
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According to the Guardian (sorry, Steve) receipts in the last three full tax years have been approximately £500bn. So given that a taxpayer is, to a first approximation, a car user, even if we accept Rutherford's £50bn figure, car-related taxes make up a small proportion of an individual's tax contribution.
I reckon I pay twice as much VAT as 'motoring tax', and ten times as much in income tax, and my car expenditure is probably above average. The OP's assertion is simply wrong.
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Can someone in the know tell us what proportion of a foreign manufactured car's retail price is made up of the cost of the car from the manufacturer to the UK distributor? And if you're really in the know the value of cars imported each month on average?
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Just a thought for your consideration, the government in this country pass laws, yet the EU in Brussels issue directives. Anyone care to explain the difference between a law and a directive?
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I reckon I pay twice as much VAT as 'motoring tax' and ten times as much in income tax and my car expenditure is probably above average. The OP's assertion is simply wrong.
The people who go for scrappage already own a car which has to be serviced, taxed, insured and fuel put in it... so by buying a new one the only people in this country that benefit are the salesman, scrap man, tax man and (if the company is a UK based maunufacturer) the company the car is bought from, all the rest of the jobs are the same as if he'd kept the old car... I just can't see how this scheme "benefits" this country.
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Perhaps I should say that I'm sure, if they tried, the Gov could come up with schemes that would benefit this country more for the same outlay than this mess of a scheme...
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