Re: Petrol?

Petrol is a scarce good, there is only so much can be got out of the ground transported and refined.

Even if it were a penny a litre it still does not mean there would be enough to go round and queues at the filling station to get ones ration.

If more were being done to develop sustainable fuels such as bio diesel and alcohol then that is something to campaing for.

Eventually the price of petrol will hike so high that currently uneconomic alternatives will cross over, but I fear we will have to see the price go up further yet before it happens.

If people buy up all Shell's stock of petrol and BP and Esso have large stocks of refined fuel then I would assume that Shell will just purchase from them at a discount price.

PJ

Aren't you all forgetting its the GOVERNMENTS TAX on fuel that is responsible for our stupidly inflated prices.

Approximately 75% of the cost of a litre of fuel is TAX!!

Rather than penalise companies that do all the work of extraction, processing, marketing and delivery, consider more direct action that the government will have to take notice of.

But we have tried this before, and nobody really gives a toss, I was at the last round of fuel protests and hardly anyone turned up.

The price of fuel is directly proportional to the majority of the country's lack of interest.

Quit moaning, get off your backsides and do something positive - lobby your MP big time, and be there at the next show of support.

HERE HERE!!

I just cant believe that the people cant see the wood for the trees!!!!

Ali

So which alternative way do you prefer to pay the tax? Increase VAT? Increase Income Tax?

Richard

Decrease bureacracy?

P.

On or around Wed, 24 Aug 2005 08:19:53 +0000 (UTC), beamendsltd enlightened us thusly:

I'm not in favour of reducing income tax to very low levels and then putting the tax all on purchases. There needs to be balance. Granted, people with high incomes are more likely to spend it and thus pay more purchase tax, but weighting it too far in favour of purchase tax is self-defeating in many ways - low-paid workers have to be supported by state subsidy, for example, in order to be able to afford to live. With higher income tax on medium-to-high incomes, and a bit less on purchases, you'd not need so much in the way of benefits for unemployed and low-wage jobs.

as to very-high incomes, well... there's a good argument in favour of taxing them the same - people with 6-figure incomes can afford to move to a country with a favourable tax regime, and many do. if you tried to put a super-tax of say 90% on all income over 500,000 then I venture to suggest you'd collect next-to-sod-all - arrange it that all income is taxed at say 25-30% (guessing at figures, here) for example, above a threshold level of something around 8 grand a year (which is a pretty low wage these days) would, I suspect, raise more revenue - people with big incomes would either not move away or would even move here from elsewhere. I don't know what the figures are, and whether for example 30% is low enough to be attractive. 30% tax on billions is better than 90% on SFA.

coming back to fuel prices... raising the fuel price to very high levels is no help in preventing waste of fuel - people will pay, then demand pay increases; transport of goods will get more expensive leading to inflation of retail prices, etc. etc. Making fuel very expensive only hurts those least able to pay; while those who can afford a vehicle with a 12-mpg thirst for everyday use (rather than as an occasional toy) can afford to fill it with petrol.

Isn't this the philosophy of not taxing what you put into the economy (your labour) but only taxing what you take out (your purchases).

Admittedly it would deserve a tax regime that zero rated essentials and progressively taxed more luxury goods.

Sadly yes but tax is, as most things like that, set on political agendas not rational ones.

nigelH

OK - so lets have some details. How? And just saying "increase efficiency", "reduce headcount" is cheating - its got to be x thousand from here, their work to be done instead by ..., that sort of thing. Oh, and don't forget to cost the extra benefits, reduancy payments, pension payments, social cost of house reposessions etc etc etc that this reduced bureacracy will entail. Oh, and don't forget the cost to us individuals that farmimg out to private firms will be.....

Richard

It may interest you lot to know that the so called high barrel prices on oil being blamed for the high pump prices is a hoax. I've just driven back from Berlin where the pump prices are at rates we were paying last year i.e around 70p per litre. What's more diesel is still more realistically priced below petrol at about 1.03 euros.

It's patently clear that the government is raising tax on fuel as a way of generating revenue to finance the bl**dy Iraq fiasco - but of course, they couldn't possibly admit it, the public would go into a frenzy!

I hate to say it, but the Government has really buggared the economy big time. Remember the council tax hikes last year? The b*st*rds did that to save money on financing the police out of the central purse.

Angry!?... I'm bl**dy furious! we are all being well and truly shafted.

Gail.

No it's not.

I live near Oxford and I've had this converation with the local authority. I asked why we had to have so many government buildings and why we could save money by merging them all into one central administrative center...needles to say they couldn't or wouldn't answer that one.

This all sounds remarkably like a good argument for reducing the population. Then the Government could save money by not having to employ so many people and merging their office buildings. The roads would become less congested, house prices would become more sensibly priced, young people could actually afforded housing, there would be enough jobs for the everyone... ha ha... Bargain! :D

Lets face it, taxation is at farcical levels. It is as much a contributor to inflation as wage increases and increased high st pricing. But the Government choose to be blind to this meagre detail. They think we all have bottom less pockets of cash and our only function in life is to go to work to pay tax! well I have news for you - I work to have a life, not to bank roll the bl**dy chancellor!

Gail

No hoax - in the UK we have elected over the years to pay quite a lot of our taxes indirectly (rightly or wrongly).

And what is the German rate of income tax?

The Government isn't rasing anything - the tax on fuel is a percentage based on the price of oil - oil goes up, Government revenue goes up; oil goes down, Goverenment revenue goes down. The budget for the war in Iraq may seem huge, but as a percentage of overall spending it hardly registers - and it certaily isn't charged against fuel tax revenue!.

Now, if you were to say that the yuppies on the oil exchanges should have their bonuses calculated on their ability to keep oil prices down rather than up, then you would have a point. If they turn round and *all* say that are not going to pay more than x for a barrel of oil then the price hike cannot take place. It's not going to happen though.

Richard

Well, I seem to remember my german colleagues saying about the same as it is here :). And in Italy, the income tax is the same as UK, they also have same rate vat, no council tax or water charges!

Y'up That makes sence. It just strikes me as odd that the oil trading market for europe is based in Amsterdam and therefore the European barrel prices are aggreed there. So either we're being lied to or the Europeans are getting a better deal than we are. Being as most of the oil companies with fuel forcourts in europe seem to be BP, Shell etc, one is naturally lead to the conclusion that we in the UK are being lied to.

I reitterate..

Gail

I think you'll find the UK direct tax burden is one of the lowest in Europe, and indeed the "developed world".

No - oil costs x per barrel. Other countries applys n tax to the price of finished product. We apply 3x that amount of tax - the oil still cost the same - no one is being lied to.

Actually - on that one we have been lied to directly.

At the time of the last fuel crisis Gordon Brown was on TV stating that "There is no mulitplier on fuel taxation"

Now, there's no multiplier on Fuel Excise Duty certainly, however there's VAT on top of that - and VAT is a multiplier tax.

Outright lie.

And I'm pissed at having to pay the commodity price, plus a fixed excise levy and then pay a multiplier tax so I'm paying VAT on another tax.

P.

Well that is blatant rubbish. I'd really like to know where you get this nonsence from. I get mine from the residents of the respective countries.

Yes I understand that, but the question is why are these punitive measures applied to us?

On the BBC morning news recently, it was announced that the increasing prices of petrol on the forcourts of the UK was as a direct result of rising barrel prices. Well I was in France of May of this year and fuel prices were the same then as now. If the barrel prices have increased and based on your logic, it would naturally follow that the the prices in mainland Europe would have increase too. They have not!

explain that!?

Gail

On or around Wed, 24 Aug 2005 10:26:24 +0100, "Paul S. Brown" enlightened us thusly:

come now, stay within the bounds of what is actually possible...

On or around Wed, 24 Aug 2005 10:05:17 +0000 (UTC), beamendsltd enlightened us thusly:

reduce workload in the DVLA by stopping the silliness of having to declare every year that a vehicle is still not on the road...

But VAT is a tax on spending, not on fuel per se.