"Road tax" again (and an idea that might help)

[italiafirenze]

Yes, cars which emit less than 100 g/km of CO2.

There are very few of them. They are all rubbish.

Abolish VED and double fuel excise duty; that will do for me.

 

[funnymummy]

motorcycle tax holder from ebay and bolted it to the front rack supports.

....And my next purcahse on Ebay shall be - Cheers Numbnuts x

 

[dodgy]

Or farm vehicles that use the road.

 

[Greenbank]

and "classic" cars built before (about) 1972 pay nil ved


anybody ever seen any evidence of drivers going on about owners of old cars not paying road tax? no, thought not.

Not in my experience. My old L-reg Triumph Spitfire was £0 VED.

 

[dellzeqq]

so to go back to Greenbank's point, is it simpler to say 'if you drove a sensible car you wouldn't pay either'

 

[PK99]

I really don'y know why some cyclists get so hot and bothered about Road Tax:

as wikipedia has it:


Road tax, known by various names around the world, is a tax which has to be paid on a motor vehicle before using it on a public road.

and

Vehicle Excise Duty (also VED, vehicle tax, car tax and road tax) is a vehicle road use tax levied as an excise duty which must be paid for most types of vehicle which are to be used (or parked) on the 'public roads' in the United Kingdom.

if you want to get hot under the collar about something ffs make it about something that matters

 

[Adasta]

as wikipedia has it

Does it have links to sources? If not then, even by Wikipedia's standards, the prose is unreliable.

 

[jonesy]

It doesn't matter. Someone fuming with Daily Mail indignation because we don't pay "road tax" isn't suddenly going to change their mind by having it pointed out to them that they've got its name wrong, and it is really a "duty" that we don't pay. It is a pedants' debate.

 

[Adasta]

It doesn't matter. Someone fuming with Daily Mail indignation because we don't pay "road tax" isn't suddenly going to change their mind by having it pointed out to them that they've got its name wrong, and it is really a "duty" that we don't pay. It is a pedants' debate.

With that sort of mentality, nothing would ever change. It might be seen as a minor linguistic/taxation difference, but I don't think people should resist from telling the truth simply because people might not believe them.

 

[downfader]

I really don'y know why some cyclists get so hot and bothered about Road Tax:

as wikipedia has it:


Road tax, known by various names around the world, is a tax which has to be paid on a motor vehicle before using it on a public road.

and

Vehicle Excise Duty (also VED, vehicle tax, car tax and road tax) is a vehicle road use tax levied as an excise duty which must be paid for most types of vehicle which are to be used (or parked) on the 'public roads' in the United Kingdom.

if you want to get hot under the collar about something ffs make it about something that matters

The point isnt just that people get things wrong, its that they use them as justification for their own wants or actions, and a level of jealously. VED is an avoidable tax in many ways. We're not the ones that get hot under the collar in all reality - I think this debate has been brought unto us.

Once the debate is won, however, it will move on to any of the other red herrings such as insurance, plates, etc.. or that we "get in the way."

 

[dellzeqq]

all you can do is deal with it at source. I can assure you that no ****er giving me this shoot has ever been left in any doubt about the difference, or, for that matter, about the size of his penis

.....although from now on, thanks to those of you who have brought me up to date, I'll be able to point out that if he had made an intelligent choice of car then he (it's always a he) would be paying anything either

 

[PK99]

Does it have links to sources? If not then, even by Wikipedia's standards, the prose is unreliable.

Pedantry[sup]2[/sup]

 

[jonesy]

With that sort of mentality, nothing would ever change. It might be seen as a minor linguistic/taxation difference, but I don't think people should resist from telling the truth simply because people might not believe them.

The point isn't whether people will believe it or not, it is that they simply aren't interested in the distinction. When they complain "Cyclists don't pay road tax", the thing they object to is the bit in red. You want to argue about the definition of the bit in blue.

People who are anti-cyclist won't be less so just because someone tells them VED isn't the same as road tax. And for people who are positive about cycling the issue doesn't even come up. The government isn't about to inflict a road tax on us, so this isn't a battle we need to fight.

 

[dellzeqq]

there is an argument, though about ownership. As far as I'm concerned (and. I'm sure you agree, Jonesy) roads are public space. The notion that the streets are 'paid for' by 'road tax' does infect policy. I'd suggest that the TfL's Draft Network Strategy rest upon the idea that the streets are not public space, but are rented out to traffic to do a job.

 

[jonesy]

I see what you mean, I'm just not convinced that the people who come out with the "cyclists don't pay road tax" argument are actually going through any kind of sophisticated thought processes about the funding of transport or the ownership of public space, so they aren't open to technical arguments about the difference between a tax and a duty. The point is that they pay something that we don't. It isn't so much the fact that we don't pay "road tax" that offends them, it is that we don't pay a "cycle tax"...