Worth getting behind this, makes a lot of economic & carbon footprint sense

Link to petition

I saw that petition too and I did sign it but then checked how many cars there are currently on the road that are 20-39 years old. It is now circa 1.5 million. For that many, if the saving per car is say £150 the loss of revenue would be £225m so unlikely to get passed! Apparently the number of cars over 20 years old has gone up from <0.5m since 2014. It seems cars are lasting longer these days but I guess small turbo engines and wet belts will reverse that trend!

Yeah, but I think that no. will fall drastically come this April when anything with a decent size engine that's a few years old is gonna be paying £760!!! That includes stuff like the Audi TT 1.8 turbo, Mondeo V6, Subaru Forester, Jag 2,0, Mondeo V6, Zafira - the se are old, workhorse vehicles, they're not exactly Ferraris are they!
How many people will continue running a car worth less than a grand when the road fund licence is £760 - it's absolutely ridiculous - particularly when the money goes nowhere near our roads, but just disappears into government black holes ...........

@russbost - Money going nowhere near our roads.

National Highways are currently spending something like £290m re-designing the M3 j9.

However the wheel eating potholes on the surrounding roads are as bad as ever.

[Edited on 9-2-26 by nick205]

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Originally posted by russbost
Yeah, but I think that no. will fall drastically come this April when anything with a decent size engine that's a few years old is gonna be paying £760!!! That includes stuff like the Audi TT 1.8 turbo, Mondeo V6, Subaru Forester, Jag 2,0, Mondeo V6, Zafira - the se are old, workhorse vehicles, they're not exactly Ferraris are they!

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Originally posted by Slimy38

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Originally posted by russbost
Yeah, but I think that no. will fall drastically come this April when anything with a decent size engine that's a few years old is gonna be paying £760!!! That includes stuff like the Audi TT 1.8 turbo, Mondeo V6, Subaru Forester, Jag 2,0, Mondeo V6, Zafira - the se are old, workhorse vehicles, they're not exactly Ferraris are they!

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I don't understand this fearmongering. I've seen all the articles, and yes it's going to be £760 which is an extortionate amount. The same tax band was £730 last year. It's not like they're suddenly paying a lot more for the same car, it's a pretty standard year-on-year increase.

There is a footnote on the VED table 'Includes cars emitting over 225g/km registered before 23 March 2006'. That keeps many of these cars in band K which is a slightly better £400 ish a year. I can't find any evidence to suggest that is going to change?

As for the reduced tax, it would be nice but encouraging older cars to stay on the roads doesn't line the politicans pockets with new car sales kickbacks. Everything they do with regards to transport has been to keep the industry going, even if it's under a thin-veiled attempt to 'reduce pollution' and 'save the environment'.

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Since when does a cars worth depend on what it's road tax is? I've had cars I paid £125 for, one I even swapped for an old model RC plane and they still saved me a heap on money over the years.

So lets buy a new car instead to save on that roadtax, but remember to take account of the spectacular deprecation it's going to have (probably a 5 figure sum) or killer finance traps that are nuking most peoples incomes, which they can't even get out of as they have so much negative equity.

Really that £760 seems like a huge bargain if you own the thing outright. My old diesel is £350 a year, double it I couldn't give a crap as I don't owe any money on it, can service it myself, have low insurance (£120) and cos it's an old car it will only go up in value now as they become rarer.

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Originally posted by Mr Whippy
Since when does a cars worth depend on what it's road tax is? I've had cars I paid £125 for, one I even swapped for an old model RC plane and they still saved me a heap on money over the years.

So lets buy a new car instead to save on that roadtax, but remember to take account of the spectacular deprecation it's going to have (probably a 5 figure sum) or killer finance traps that are nuking most peoples incomes, which they can't even get out of as they have so much negative equity.

Really that £760 seems like a huge bargain if you own the thing outright. My old diesel is £350 a year, double it I couldn't give a crap as I don't owe any money on it, can service it myself, have low insurance (£120) and cos it's an old car it will only go up in value now as they become rarer.

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It's a completely ridiculous situation having let our law makers tinker with the road fund license to try and influence buying habits etc.

There is absolutely no justification for charging some drivers £700 plus and others nothing because they've bought an electric. I should not be be subsidising other drivers' choices. It should be a straight annual fee. As with so many things successive governments have opened the door to allow a system to be abused beyond all recognition.

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Originally posted by russbost

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Originally posted by Mr Whippy
Since when does a cars worth depend on what it's road tax is? I've had cars I paid £125 for, one I even swapped for an old model RC plane and they still saved me a heap on money over the years.

So lets buy a new car instead to save on that roadtax, but remember to take account of the spectacular deprecation it's going to have (probably a 5 figure sum) or killer finance traps that are nuking most peoples incomes, which they can't even get out of as they have so much negative equity.

Really that £760 seems like a huge bargain if you own the thing outright. My old diesel is £350 a year, double it I couldn't give a crap as I don't owe any money on it, can service it myself, have low insurance (£120) and cos it's an old car it will only go up in value now as they become rarer.

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Yeah, I sort of see where you're coming from, but I think you're missing the point that many peeps just don't look at the overall picture, they look at monthly spend & they say, I"can't afford £760 for car tax, but I can afford a £200 a month contract on a newer car" - completely missing the point that they could have paid that road tax monthly - people really aren't very good at financial planning ...........

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Originally posted by Twobeers
It's a completely ridiculous situation having let our law makers tinker with the road fund license to try and influence buying habits etc.

There is absolutely no justification for charging some drivers £700 plus and others nothing because they've bought an electric. I should not be be subsidising other drivers' choices. It should be a straight annual fee. As with so many things successive governments have opened the door to allow a system to be abused beyond all recognition.

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Of course the environmental impact argument is also somewhat dented by the emissions scandal. Between the VED changes that brought in CO2 bands in 2001 and when the scandal became known in 2017 thus bring in the current system the stated CO2 figures from manufacturers testing miraculously dropped from circa 200g/km to below 130g/km for very similar cars with very similar "real world" fuel consumption. Over that period the difference between published/tested fuel consumption (directly related to CO2) and actual obtained fuel consumption in use also increased massively. As such, whilst I'm sure there were improvements in efficiency during that time, the majority of the claimed CO2 reduction was from cheating the testing system. That makes it even more unfair that drivers of, say, a 2005 Mondeo 2.0 petrol with CO2 of 192 (hence VED of £395) and a 2016 Mondeo 2.0 Petrol CO2 130 (hence VED £165). They are basically similar engines and the real world consumption and CO2 are no more than 5% different...

[Edited on 15/2/26 by Sanzomat]