…and remember this was a political choice.
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Far from knowing the details of the French ‘road tax’ system, it has changed a lot over recent years however an outline of what I understand.
Fuel like in the UK is taxed to the hilt, up to 80% of what we pay for petrol is tax. However it doesn’t go into a specific road kitty, it’s just general tax.
Road tax was abolished some years ago for particuliers (private road use) however companies have to pay road tax (this reduced company car fleets dramatically). This road tax is quite strange in that it is set at departmental level so companies register vehicles in departements with the lowest rate.
Motorways are funded in 2 ways most are built by ‘specialised’ companies who get a lincence to toll their sections (toll rates are set by committee overseen by government) these companies are charged with the upkeep and safety of their motorway sections during the duration of their licence (even so it’s fairly lucrative) I’m not sure how service stations fit in however the laybys are administered and up kept by the licence holder.
Free sections on motorways are administered and paid for by the local authority (as a service to the population) note that the state and available services on these sections are minimal however they serve the communities well in that there’s no tolls to pay when traveling to work.
There is a portion of tax on the toll which goes to the government (probably about 21% that is all. As I said administrating motorways is very lucrative and hence competitive. The actual terms of the licence I do not know however the companies involved fight tooth and nail for each and every section.
Note that French motorways were designed to have toll entries and exits and still they get tail backs. The UK would have to do an enormous amount of work to create toll areas. I can not see this system work so some sort of camera taking licence plates or chip in the car?
Whatever it would be an enormous expense.
I think the UK needs to get it’s roads in order 1st you can not ask people to pay for roads in pityful state. In France when a company enters a location an assessement is made and they contribute to road upgrades to help with circulation (this is particularly true for mines and quarries roads around such enterprises are surprisingly good and well kept the opposite is true in the UK).
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It does indeed. There is a massive maintenance backlog black hole threatening to bite someone in the ass at some point. I suspect you could say similar for every sector of the UK; health, education etc.
Hence my concern at tax receipts not getting to the sharp end where the cash actually delivers something physical.
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I went through the Tyne Tunnel a couple of weeks ago and they have a pre-payment system which appears to work, even with my German number plate. However, can you imagine the problems with people using cloned plates and so on? It’s bad enough even with people abusing it for tax and insurance and so on. The chip-in-car system would avoid that and would potentially address privacy issues but what is the failure rate and how would enforcement be done?
The one thing with road fuel tax is that it is very cheap to collect and very difficult to avoid (red diesel scams aside).
Anyone know how reliable the chip in car system is with the Mersey tunnels? I use them so infrequently I still use coins.
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It also hits the pocket which causes people to think twice before using the car however again it hits lower income groups hardest (then as they tend to have older gas guzzlers anyway that could be helping the environment a bit) it doesn’t hurt the rich in their 4x4s though (so that probably cancels out the benefits).
I forgot in France there’s ‘penalties’ based on CV (administrative and insurance certification based on car power rating (hp)) when buying a new car. Anything over 8CV gets really thumped, it’s a tax to dissaude 4x4s and sports cars. I think this goes directly into the governments coffers but is meant as an ecological tax. It doesn’t stop the rich so it’s pretty useless except for the extra tax money.
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Any tax measure used as an economic lever is going to hit those on lower incomes more. A lot of these are not really aimed directly at the consumer, though. For example, the sugar tax on fizzy drinks was aimed at the manufacturers. It wasn’t meant to raise tax. In fact it wasn’t envisaged that anyone would pay it.
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Better sell now and rent then buy back in a year. Considers what’s in the attic. Nah, I’d rather jump into an industrial meat grinder.
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Never seen so many charts centered on 1 subject in my life.
Anyway, only 3 more weeks to go until Sunak surpasses the mighty reign of our last historic national treasure of a PM.
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And rural areas where there is little option other than driving to work.
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I wonder how long before this is recognised as fact, or if it ever will be?
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