VED and other taxes for ICE cars next 10 years?

[paul n]

Probably a bit of guess work involved here but was hoping for some expertise buried deep here in the forum!

The rights and wrongs of the government going down the full EV route are well debated and i was thinking up until this point that they are not just going to hike up prices in VED and other taxes on ICE as that would massively effect the life of many working people (local incomes families would be worse effected) I then read about the current tax costs in Ireland and some other places in Europe (see France's new tax rules coming in next year) and it sort of suddenly hit me that they might well do that in a desperate push to hit emissions targets/ sell a lot of Ev's!?

Having read up on the taxes for cars in Ireland (if i have read it right) i would be looking at an extra approx. 3k a year just in VED for the 3 cars we have as a family (sorry not a typical piston heads supercar fleet!). If this did happen then i would have to either sell the cars and down grade to a 1.0 petrol estate or spend 60k on a EV that won't currently suit my needs. (rather not!)

Our cars

Wifes car/ work hack: 2011 Skoda yeti 170 4 x 4, 199k miles, costs 3k to buy second hand. wife required some off road capability as she working in forestry. getting on a bit and will need changed soon.

My car/ work hack: 2008 Audi all road A6 3.0tdi, 135k miles, cost 3.5k to buy second hand, 280bhp with a remap, smooth and comfortable, massive inside for carrying what i need for work, has adjustable suspension for light off road requirement for work (used to bottom out my old BMW estate sometimes!) going strong and should do another 60k easy.

Fun car/ dream car: 2009 Lotus Evora Launch edition, cost approx. 26k, only does 3-4k a year and ironically is the only car which is ULEZ compliant.


I had thought about selling the two work cars and getting a bigger 4 x 4 for me and my wife to use for work and get a small petrol or EV maybe for running about town etc but the fear would be that bigger 4 x 4 would get taxed to hell also (looking at the new defender and or the new ineos and keep for a long time) Our holidays normally involve camping in northern Scotland and carrying bikes canoes etc so i don't think there is currently a EV out there which can performance this function unless there is a big increase in range when loaded with un aerodynamic stuff on top and the charging infrastructure at camping/ remote sites it not ideal right now!

The lotus was meant to be a keeper but if VED and fuel costs are going to sky rocket then sadly it might have to go (i would be gutted)

Just in a bit of a quandary of what to do, don't want to be in a situation where all my cars plummet in value over night and i REALLY don't' like underpowered front wheel drive estates! I am not anti EV for normal cars (i don't see the appeal of a EV lotus!) but with the aerodynamic requirements of them mean there are very few (any?) practical square box shaped 4 x 4/ estate cars on the market in EV world.

Am i just worrying or is this going to happen?

Cheers Paul

[paul n]

forgot to add, do people thing they will smash up the VED etc on commercial vehicles also? van's etc? as that could be another option for us.

[Sebring440]

paul n said:

Probably a bit of guess work involved here but was hoping for some expertise buried deep here in the forum!

The rights and wrongs of the government going down the full EV route are well debated and i was thinking up until this point that they are not just going to hike up prices in VED and other taxes on ICE as that would massively effect the life of many working people (local incomes families would be worse effected) I then read about the current tax costs in Ireland and some other places in Europe (see France's new tax rules coming in next year) and it sort of suddenly hit me that they might well do that in a desperate push to hit emissions targets/ sell a lot of Ev's!?

Having read up on the taxes for cars in Ireland (if i have read it right) i would be looking at an extra approx. 3k a year just in VED for the 3 cars we have as a family (sorry not a typical piston heads supercar fleet!). If this did happen then i would have to either sell the cars and down grade to a 1.0 petrol estate or spend 60k on a EV that won't currently suit my needs. (rather not!)

Our cars

Wifes car/ work hack: 2011 Skoda yeti 170 4 x 4, 199k miles, costs 3k to buy second hand. wife required some off road capability as she working in forestry. getting on a bit and will need changed soon.

My car/ work hack: 2008 Audi all road A6 3.0tdi, 135k miles, cost 3.5k to buy second hand, 280bhp with a remap, smooth and comfortable, massive inside for carrying what i need for work, has adjustable suspension for light off road requirement for work (used to bottom out my old BMW estate sometimes!) going strong and should do another 60k easy.

Fun car/ dream car: 2009 Lotus Evora Launch edition, cost approx. 26k, only does 3-4k a year and ironically is the only car which is ULEZ compliant.


I had thought about selling the two work cars and getting a bigger 4 x 4 for me and my wife to use for work and get a small petrol or EV maybe for running about town etc but the fear would be that bigger 4 x 4 would get taxed to hell also (looking at the new defender and or the new ineos and keep for a long time) Our holidays normally involve camping in northern Scotland and carrying bikes canoes etc so i don't think there is currently a EV out there which can performance this function unless there is a big increase in range when loaded with un aerodynamic stuff on top and the charging infrastructure at camping/ remote sites it not ideal right now!

The lotus was meant to be a keeper but if VED and fuel costs are going to sky rocket then sadly it might have to go (i would be gutted)

Just in a bit of a quandary of what to do, don't want to be in a situation where all my cars plummet in value over night and i REALLY don't' like underpowered front wheel drive estates! I am not anti EV for normal cars (i don't see the appeal of a EV lotus!) but with the aerodynamic requirements of them mean there are very few (any?) practical square box shaped 4 x 4/ estate cars on the market in EV world.

Am i just worrying or is this going to happen?

Cheers Paul

paul n said:

local incomes families would be worse effected

That depends where you live I suppose. Rough area, may affect people more than if you live in Mayfair.

paul n said:

don't want to be in a situation where all my cars plummet in value over night

There will be no "plummeting". The Audi and Skoda are worth very little anyway, so you're not going to lose anything there.

The Lotus will always have an enthusiasts' market and the value may actually appreciate.

[paul n]

I was really thinking if I buy a newer ICE car rather than the value of the Skoda and the Audi but still even losing 3 k in one hit of for example the Audi became unsellable would be quite a lot for me! (Not ya standard pistonheads high salary here!)

[btdk5]

paul n said:

I was really thinking if I buy a newer ICE car rather than the value of the Skoda and the Audi but still even losing 3 k in one hit of for example the Audi became unsellable would be quite a lot for me! (Not ya standard pistonheads high salary here!)

Why are you talking about buying a new car to save money?

Even if they put it up by 200 quid a year that’s 17 quid a month. Not the end of the world.

[paul n]

btdk5 said:

Why are you talking about buying a new car to save money?

Even if they put it up by 200 quid a year that’s 17 quid a month. Not the end of the world.

I am not talking about buying a new car to save money. Would potentially be buying a new car relatively soon but potentially hold off for abit.

Taking my Audi as an example if the uk followed Irish VED rates it would go from £585 a year to £2400 a year so not trivial money!

[btdk5]

paul n said:

I am not talking about buying a new car to save money. Would potentially be buying a new car relatively soon but potentially hold off for abit.

Taking my Audi as an example if the uk followed Irish VED rates it would go from £585 a year to £2400 a year so not trivial money!

What would you value the two cars at now? Maybe £500 each. Probably best to run them till something major goes wrong if you’re looking to be as efficient as possible.

I don’t know anything about Irish car tax but there is no way a policy like that would be brought in over night. Especially by this U-Turn government.

Probably more likely to see an expanding of ULEZ rules coupled with stricter conditions.

[SidewaysSi]

Holy st. Do we need get another thread talking about this crap?

[paul n]

Well no, yeti probably worth 2.8k and Audi the same maybe more than I paid as I have put some of money into it. You buy a bag of bolts for £500 now a days!

Yeah I was thinking they would never do that but then seeing what other countries are doing I could easily see it being label as necessary to combat the climate crisis. The ULEZ zones do very little to limit co2 but good for cash generation!

Seems like the majority of EV adoption right now is companies and company car owners taking advantage of the new tax breaks so they might have to do in harder on people to make them change to EV. Either that or make the grant higher to help adoption but looking at this government taxing the st out it might be their preferred option?

What would you value the two cars at now? Maybe £500 each. Probably best to run them till something major goes wrong if you’re looking to be as efficient as possible.

I don’t know anything about Irish car tax but there is no way a policy like that would be brought in over night. Especially by this U-Turn government.

Probably more likely to see an expanding of ULEZ rules coupled with stricter conditions.
[/quote]

[paul n]

Sorry!

SidewaysSi said:

Holy st. Do we need get another thread talking about this crap?

[dmsims]

ULEZ nothing to do with CO2. They are there to get rid of toxic diesel emissions

[Subculture]

I suspect they will start taxing EVs to make up the shortfall in duties.

[samoht]

paul n said:

Having read up on the taxes for cars in Ireland (if i have read it right) i would be looking at an extra approx. 3k a year just in VED for the 3 cars we have as a family (sorry not a typical piston heads supercar fleet!). If this did happen then i would have to either sell the cars and down grade to a 1.0 petrol estate or spend 60k on a EV that won't currently suit my needs. (rather not!)

As far as I can see, Ireland introduced these high taxes on new cars. Older cars are still on the original tax basis that applied when they were first registered, with 'inflation' type small annual increases as we have here.

So I don't think anyone in Ireland is paying drastically higher road tax today than when they chose to buy their car.

Putting up taxes on older cars is possible, but very rare, especially if it's a very significant rise.

Gordon Brown proposed to eliminate the 2001-06 exemption of the top rate of emissions-based road tax, but was forced into a U-turn after his own MPs (Labour MPs) objected to potential doubling of tax rates on a relatively small number of cars on the road
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2008/may/27/t...

Labour MP for Wolverhampton South West said:

"It is not about changing future behaviour because these cars already exist in the fleet. Therefore it is retrospective tax. I am in favour of prospective green taxes to change people's decisions when buying a new car. But taxing them heavily on a car which may have been bought seven years ago does not seem a good way to go and will discredit the concept of green taxes."

Unless someone can find evidence to the contrary, I'm not aware of any cases in any major European country of road taxes for existing cars rising hugely (100% or more). The really big taxes we hear about in neighbouring countries generally apply to new vehicles, so the owners know what they're getting themselves in to when they buy.

So while your plan to replace your Evora with a Launch Edition Emira might be scuppered by a sudden rise in tax rates, it's much less likely that the cars already in your garage will incur vastly higher rates of tax, I think.

The one exception I can think of is that there has been consideration of increased taxes on 2017-onwards cars. Currently you could have a 2017 Bugatti Chiron, all two tonnes, eight litres and four turbos of it, and after next year you would see your annual road tax cut from £490 a year to £155 a year, as the 'luxury tax' supplement on cars costing over £40k new, of £335pa for years 2-6 will expire, dropping all cars back to the basic rate. It's possible that the idea of a big tax cut for millionaire owners of a car that puffs out 516g/km of CO2 might be seen as misaligned with social priorities, so could be applied only to lower emissions cars for instance. But that would be losing a proposed cut, rather than a rise on current rates.

Edited by samoht on Saturday 13th November 23:09

[griffter]

A slightly tangential point but here goes.
I had a nice newish low CO2 Renault which was £140 a year or something to tax.
I then picked up an old diesel Transporter which is £600 a year to tax.
The Transporter does everything the Renault did and more. Damned if I was going to pay £50 a month to use it once every two-four weeks when I needed to carry family plus luggage plus bikes etc. and use the Renault for all the other journeys.

So I sold the Renault and now drive the Transporter everywhere. A direct consequence of the tax regime on older cars being a perverse incentive to use the high polluter more.

If the £600 & £140 had been the other way round I may well have kept the Renault too.

[ChattingWham]

I have no insider knowledge on this at all, so what follows is guesswork at best.

But I'd be surprised if the UK government -- especially this government -- starts to increase taxation retrospectively on cars. They're more likely to do things like long-term behaviour nudges and incentives on buying new/er. And discourage you from using those older cars in certain places.

What's more possible, in my view, is any or all of these three things:
-- Tax starts to be applied to electric cars
-- Road pricing
-- More ULEZs/CAZs in cities and towns. Full-on diesel bans, possibly (a misguided overreach of an idea, in my view, but plausible given the current narrative)

I also think there will be a series of incentives to get people to scrap 'older' cars (like your Skoda and Audi) and change them for new electric ones. Because the economy loves a spender, basically.

[Pica-Pica]

dmsims said:

ULEZ nothing to do with CO2. They are there to get rid of toxic diesel emissions

They are there to fiscally discourage use of pre-EU6 diesel cars (and other similar vehicles/engines) in the zone, to be exact.

[ZX10R NIN]

ChattingWham said:

I have no insider knowledge on this at all, so what follows is guesswork at best.

But I'd be surprised if the UK government -- especially this government -- starts to increase taxation retrospectively on cars. They're more likely to do things like long-term behaviour nudges and incentives on buying new/er. And discourage you from using those older cars in certain places.

What's more possible, in my view, is any or all of these three things:
-- Tax starts to be applied to electric cars
-- Road pricing
-- More ULEZs/CAZs in cities and towns. Full-on diesel bans, possibly (a misguided overreach of an idea, in my view, but plausible given the current narrative)

I also think there will be a series of incentives to get people to scrap 'older' cars (like your Skoda and Audi) and change them for new electric ones. Because the economy loves a spender, basically.

I agree with the above apart from road pricing, the simplest way to get the lost revenue from the lower road tax revenue is to put a tariff on electricity.
It's much cheaper to apply than the cost of tech to make road pricing work properly.
Also if EV's are having to pay road tax then there's no need to have road pricing.

In London EV's should now be paying the congestion charge because the ULEZ takes care of the emissions side of things, so TFL are shooting themselves in the foot whilst crying that they're losing money.

[paul n]

https://www.chill.ie/blog/new-changes-to-motor-tax...

So it looks like the new tax in Ireland was bought in in 2008 so effects most cars still about today but yeah hopefully they won't do it retrospectively fingers crossed. Depends how much the climate crisis rhetoric gets ramped up.

The government really it's helping people switch with a paltry 2.5k grant only up to £35k! it is was better incentives i would certainly switch one of the cars. All this talk and EV's are 10k more than the ICE versions, trains cost more than flights and bus services are limited!

if they really want to hit these co2 targets they need to put their hand in their pocket more eh!

have been looking at the new skoda SUV, looks good but wouldn't work for holidays with a fully loaded car with bikes/ canoes etc so then i still need to keep a large car for that going!

never easy eh!

samoht said:

Unless someone can find evidence to the contrary, I'm not aware of any cases in any major European country of road taxes for existing cars rising hugely (100% or more). The really big taxes we hear about in neighbouring countries generally apply to new vehicles, so the owners know what they're getting themselves in to when they buy.

So while your plan to replace your Evora with a Launch Edition Emira might be scuppered by a sudden rise in tax rates, it's much less likely that the cars already in your garage will incur vastly higher rates of tax, I think.

The one exception I can think of is that there has been consideration of increased taxes on 2017-onwards cars. Currently you could have a 2017 Bugatti Chiron, all two tonnes, eight litres and four turbos of it, and after next year you would see your annual road tax cut from £490 a year to £155 a year, as the 'luxury tax' supplement on cars costing over £40k new, of £335pa for years 2-6 will expire, dropping all cars back to the basic rate. It's possible that the idea of a big tax cut for millionaire owners of a car that puffs out 516g/km of CO2 might be seen as misaligned with social priorities, so could be applied only to lower emissions cars for instance. But that would be losing a proposed cut, rather than a rise on current rates.

Edited by samoht on Saturday 13th November 23:09