Changes at DVLA - tell them what you think

I really don't see why owners of some old vehicles should get free road tax. It makes no sense at all. They're unlikely to be poor - otherwise they'd run a more recent vehicle with lower running costs. And their car takes up just as much space on the road as any other. All it means is that everyone else is subsidising their hobby.

Do you not think it was greedy of the current government to scrap free road tax when it came to office? Although the cars that had qualified can obviously claim free road tax.

I mean how mean can Gordon Brown go? For the little revenue our classics probably generate in comparison to overall figures I think it was bloody greedy!

For those who don't know the origin of the free 'Historic' road fund disc....

It was brought in as a pacifying measure when the 'Possession Tax' [1] was on the cards so that those who only used their 'historic' car perhaps 3 months a year would not have to tax them for the full 12 months. I tens to agree with you Dave, originally it was intended for little used vehicles but is now used by some as just a way of motoring 12K miles a year on the cheap.

This applies to cars that were manufactured in 1972 or before as I understand it. How many cars do you see on the road in a typical day? How many of these are of that age?

I think to state "now used by some as just a way of motoring 12K miles a year on the cheap" is overstating it a bit, don't you?

Funnily enough, I see quite a few of these 'older' cars around my part of the world, but on top of that, you just need to think (or search) back to questions that have been posted in this group [1] or for that matter the editorial line some magazines take.

They didn't scrap it. They merely didn't allow a rolling date.

Giving a tax concession to one group means everyone else pays more. Why should those who choose old cars as a hobby have this privilege? It makes no sense at all.

The govt say that the 25 year rolling exemption was stopped as it was not compatible with their targets of reducing emissions.

The current exemptions cost approx £40 million per annum in 'lost' revenue. If they'd continued with the rolling exemption, this would now be close to £50 million per annum. Total revenue is close to £5 billion per annum, so the exemption represents about 0.8% of the total, and would be about 1% if the rolling exemption had continued. But, as I said, they claim the reason is environmental, not financial.

In message , on Thu, 2 Sep 2004, Jeremy writes

And particularly sickening to me, as my car was built in November 1973, so is not a "historic vehicle". It averages 1500 miles a year, and what annoys me even more is that it cannot physically negotiate speed cushions without grounding, which means that an increasing number of roads are becoming impassable for me, yet I still have to pay full road tax for the car. I haven't lowered it - if I had, I'd only have myself to blame - it's exactly as it left the factory.

Phil

Bill Davies ( snipped-for-privacy@rabbits4classics.co.uk) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

My response :-

To introduce an annual registration fee and a change of keeper fee will, to my mind, have a deleterious effect on the accuracy of the registration database.

At a time when the accuracy of this information is paramount, due to the move to traffic policing by camera, to introduce any move which will positively give the less scrupulous end of the vehicle trade an excuse not to record transfers and an excuse not to maintain vehicle registrations seems bizarre at the best.

Additionally, it will cause many classic vehicles currently off the road and stored to be scrapped.

Dave Plowman (News) ( snipped-for-privacy@davenoise.co.uk) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

Oh, c'mon, Dave. How many people use a pre-73 car as their everyday driver?

No, they tend to do FAR lower average mileages, and tend to be garaged the vast majority of the time, so use far less road space over time.

Whereas, if all classics were subject again to the same annual VED, those classics are subsidising road use by the rest of the country.

Until such time as VED is scrapped completely and replaced by an annual mileage/fuel use based fee, this is about the fairest way of not penalising older cars more heavily.

Most other EU countries have similar reduced taxes for older vehicles.

Steve Loft ( snipped-for-privacy@nybbles.co.uk) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

What's the average mileage of the "Historic Vehicle"? What pollution is generated over that mileage, compared to the growth of oversized, overweight, overpowered big SUV/4x4s?

A quarter of a million pre-73 cars taxed every year? That sounds a bit high to me.

Then look at it the other way and explain why someone doing a thousand miles a year should have to pay the same road tax as someone doing 30,000.

What does that have to do with it? Or are you suggesting means tested road taxation?

Only when it's _on_ the road.

It'd be interesting to see some figures to show just how much the average driver is subsiding our hobby. And then compare them with how much we all subsidise the airline industry to cart planeloads of drunks to Eye-beetha, for example.

Some perhaps, but hardly enough to be significant. In my experience, it simply allows enthusiasts to keep a collection of two or three classics going, rather than just one for six months each year. If this has the effect of keeping some of the less conventionally popular classics out of breaker's yards, then that has to be a good thing, IMO. My big problem with the concession is the result that the arbitrary cut-off date has on cars built on the wrong side of it. For that reason alone, I'd be happier abolishing road tax entirely and charging by fuel usage - but only if the rate was calculated fairly, which of course it would never be!

But it was not just 'Historic Vehicles' that were benefiting by the time the rolling entitlement date was scraped and replaced by a fixed date, it was starting to be used by people just running around in 'old bangers' - just think what the current entitlement date would be now if the date had not been fixed....

Most modern SUV's put out considerably less pollution than a 1975 car does in a 12 month period.

You have to go back to the reasons why the exemption was brought in (the fact that the 'possession tax' never came into being is not the issue though).

If this was the only hobby with any sort of subsidy or tax concession, you might have a point. It isn't by a long way. Hell, even getting married means paying less tax, where's the sense in that?

That is a reason for campaigning to have tarmac humps removed, not one for having free use of the road just because you own an old post historic car.

Unless it really is a historic car from that period, in which case I would have expected you to be able to afford the road fund licence !...

What car is it ?

Well there isn't if they don't then procreate....!!!

:::Jerry:::: ( snipped-for-privacy@privacy.net) gurgled happily, sounding much like they :::were saying :

Bollocks.

Besides, 1975 cars pay full road tax - the same amount as a 2.5ton 5-litre Cayenne Turbo, V10 Tuareg, LandCruiser Amazon or AMG ML55.

Even when you take into account annual mileage and building the thing in the first place? The 1975 car already exists, whereas the SUV is being recreated every ten years or so. Also, the SUV probably has air conditioning so never has its engine switched off while anyone's sitting in it!