Fuel Duty Stabliser
Author
Discussion

ringram

Original Poster:

14,702 posts

278 months

Friday 25th June 2010
quotequote all
Anyone else think this is a crap idea?
Why is the government talking about fighting the market price?

If fuel costs to much get a smaller or more efficient vehicle!

Sounds like a communist subsidy to me. Pointless, expensive and useless waste of my tax, which Id rather help spend on debt reduction.

youngsyr

14,742 posts

222 months

Friday 25th June 2010
quotequote all
You do realise that around 70% of the "market price" of fuel in the UK consists of tax? confused


TheEnd

15,370 posts

218 months

Friday 25th June 2010
quotequote all
ringram said:
If fuel costs to much get a smaller or more efficient vehicle!


Hi! It looks like you are on the wrong forum!

Do you want to continue?

The Black Flash

13,735 posts

228 months

Friday 25th June 2010
quotequote all
Nice rofl

Morningside

24,147 posts

259 months

Friday 25th June 2010
quotequote all
ringram said:
If fuel costs to much get a smaller or more efficient vehicle!
Now, I had quite a massive argument with a good friend of mine about this.
His argument was that 'gas guzzlers' should and will pay higher tax/fuel costs and I was trying to make it clear to him that what will happen in 20 years time when we are all driving around in 1.1L stboxes.

The tax and fuel scale would have to drop to compensate. So what next? All drive around in 800cc cars?

OnTheOverrun

3,965 posts

207 months

Friday 25th June 2010
quotequote all
ringram said:
Anyone else think this is a crap idea?
Why is the government talking about fighting the market price?

If fuel costs to much get a smaller or more efficient vehicle!

Sounds like a communist subsidy to me. Pointless, expensive and useless waste of my tax, which Id rather help spend on debt reduction.
I thought the idea was simply to vary the amount of duty on the fuel as the oil price rises and falls to maintain a stable fuel price for the consumer? I can't see how that can be construed as a subsidy when as someone else has mentioned, 70% of the market price is not set by the market, but is duty.

fido

18,918 posts

285 months

Friday 25th June 2010
quotequote all
Seems a sensible idea to me, especially in the current economic climate when businesses need to predict and manage costs .. big companies can hedge commodity prices and get it spectacularly wrong like BA did a few years back.

Edited by fido on Friday 25th June 13:58

ringram

Original Poster:

14,702 posts

278 months

Friday 25th June 2010
quotequote all
OnTheOverrun said:
ringram said:
Anyone else think this is a crap idea?
Why is the government talking about fighting the market price?

If fuel costs to much get a smaller or more efficient vehicle!

Sounds like a communist subsidy to me. Pointless, expensive and useless waste of my tax, which Id rather help spend on debt reduction.
I thought the idea was simply to vary the amount of duty on the fuel as the oil price rises and falls to maintain a stable fuel price for the consumer? I can't see how that can be construed as a subsidy when as someone else has mentioned, 70% of the market price is not set by the market, but is duty.
If you reduce the tax/duty take, that in effect is subsidising spending on fuel. Also what about the administrative overhead, useless fools managing the scheme etc, why!? Surely the consumer can manage their own stabiliser. Its called SAVING. Save more when prices are low and dip into savings if prices rise. Wow, what a novel idea!

Anyway anyone who knows me, knows I have a 7.2L LS7 V8 VXR8 so I dont care about fuel prices. In fact the higher they are the better, less crap cars on the road getting in the way biggrin

528Sport

1,465 posts

264 months

Friday 25th June 2010
quotequote all
I like the idea.

With regards to driving round in 800cc tin cans that's fine but what will they tax next then the revenue starts to fall?

.

V88Dicky

7,373 posts

213 months

Friday 25th June 2010
quotequote all
800cc tin cans.

youngsyr

14,742 posts

222 months

Friday 25th June 2010
quotequote all
ringram said:
OnTheOverrun said:
ringram said:
Anyone else think this is a crap idea?
Why is the government talking about fighting the market price?

If fuel costs to much get a smaller or more efficient vehicle!

Sounds like a communist subsidy to me. Pointless, expensive and useless waste of my tax, which Id rather help spend on debt reduction.
I thought the idea was simply to vary the amount of duty on the fuel as the oil price rises and falls to maintain a stable fuel price for the consumer? I can't see how that can be construed as a subsidy when as someone else has mentioned, 70% of the market price is not set by the market, but is duty.
If you reduce the tax/duty take, that in effect is subsidising spending on fuel. Also what about the administrative overhead, useless fools managing the scheme etc, why!? Surely the consumer can manage their own stabiliser. Its called SAVING. Save more when prices are low and dip into savings if prices rise. Wow, what a novel idea!

Anyway anyone who knows me, knows I have a 7.2L LS7 V8 VXR8 so I dont care about fuel prices. In fact the higher they are the better, less crap cars on the road getting in the way biggrin
I think you're being a bit naive if you anticipate the government putting in place a scheme that will lower their tax take on fuel.

What is much more likely is that a pricing (or more accurately, taxing) level will be set at which, on average, the total tax take will maintain in line with previous years, yet the pump price of fuel will remain more stable.

As for more pointless administrators, I can't see why this would be required, after all, the actual tax take on a litre of fuel is not straight-forward now and currently changes on a regular basis with market prices, as the duty is set at a fixed price per litre and VAT is set at a fixed percentage per pound on the net price of the fuel plus duty.

All that would change in the proposed system is that the tax take would vary depending on the market price of the fuel, this could actually lead to a simpler system, with the tax take per litre simply being £X.XX less an accepted price for the fuel based on market rates for the raw product, which are widely available, plus an allowed mark up.

OnTheOverrun

3,965 posts

207 months

Friday 25th June 2010
quotequote all
ringram said:
OnTheOverrun said:
ringram said:
Anyone else think this is a crap idea?
Why is the government talking about fighting the market price?

If fuel costs to much get a smaller or more efficient vehicle!

Sounds like a communist subsidy to me. Pointless, expensive and useless waste of my tax, which Id rather help spend on debt reduction.
I thought the idea was simply to vary the amount of duty on the fuel as the oil price rises and falls to maintain a stable fuel price for the consumer? I can't see how that can be construed as a subsidy when as someone else has mentioned, 70% of the market price is not set by the market, but is duty.
If you reduce the tax/duty take, that in effect is subsidising spending on fuel. Also what about the administrative overhead, useless fools managing the scheme etc, why!? Surely the consumer can manage their own stabiliser. Its called SAVING. Save more when prices are low and dip into savings if prices rise. Wow, what a novel idea!

Anyway anyone who knows me, knows I have a 7.2L LS7 V8 VXR8 so I dont care about fuel prices. In fact the higher they are the better, less crap cars on the road getting in the way biggrin
Conversely, making fuel much cheaper would also remove lots of the st cars clogging the roads as more people could afford to run a decent car and there'd be far fewer people crawling round in bluemotion boxes desperately trying never to press the throttle or brake. . . . . . biggrin

Jasandjules

72,624 posts

259 months

Friday 25th June 2010
quotequote all
ringram said:
Anyone else think this is a crap idea?
Why is the government talking about fighting the market price?

If fuel costs to much get a smaller or more efficient vehicle!

Sounds like a communist subsidy to me. Pointless, expensive and useless waste of my tax, which Id rather help spend on debt reduction.
How about we increase the tax on Green products to the same as the Tax on Fuel?

supersingle

3,205 posts

249 months

Friday 25th June 2010
quotequote all
Remove vat from fuel and up the fixed duty. Would make pump price more stable without constant meddling from gov.

Price controls are for communists and African dictatorships.

youngsyr

14,742 posts

222 months

Friday 25th June 2010
quotequote all
supersingle said:
Remove vat from fuel and up the fixed duty. Would make pump price more stable without constant meddling from gov.

Price controls are for communists and African dictatorships.
Removing VAT wouldn't make fuel prices significantly more stable - VAT is a set % of the sale price + duty (fixed at Xp) - there's no variable element to it.

Whilst it does slightly increase the impact of any underlying changes in the cost of getting fuel to the pump, it's nowhere near as significant a factor as the $:£ exchange rate or the price of oil.

Edited by youngsyr on Friday 25th June 15:05

catso

16,505 posts

297 months

Friday 25th June 2010
quotequote all
ringram said:
If fuel costs to much get a smaller or more efficient vehicle!
Actually I half agree so I traded in my Wife's 2.3 petrol for a 1.6 diesel, gotta make a saving somewhere... wink

OnTheOverrun

3,965 posts

207 months

Friday 25th June 2010
quotequote all
youngsyr said:
Removing VAT wouldn't make fuel prices significantly more stable - VAT is a set % of the sale price + duty (fixed at Xp) - there's no variable element to it.
There is a variable amount with regard to VAT - the duty may be fixed but the oil price isn't and VAT is applicable to that so rises and falls with oil price.

V88Dicky

7,373 posts

213 months

Friday 25th June 2010
quotequote all
catso said:
ringram said:
If fuel costs to much get a smaller or more efficient vehicle!
Actually I half agree so I traded in my Wife's 2.3 petrol for a 1.6 diesel, gotta make a saving somewhere... wink
We did the same too. The car we bought was identical in every respect to the one parked next to it at the dealership, except it has the 4.2 petrol instead of the 2.7 diesel. This saved us over £2,500 in purchase price which is about 470 gallons of unleaded. About 18 months worth of driving before the diesel version would catch up. You can't beat man maths biggrin

Edited to say my man maths is crap. It would take 4 years 2 months for the diesel to start paying dividends.

Edited by V88Dicky on Friday 25th June 15:53

youngsyr

14,742 posts

222 months

Friday 25th June 2010
quotequote all
OnTheOverrun said:
youngsyr said:
Removing VAT wouldn't make fuel prices significantly more stable - VAT is a set % of the sale price + duty (fixed at Xp) - there's no variable element to it.
There is a variable amount with regard to VAT - the duty may be fixed but the oil price isn't and VAT is applicable to that so rises and falls with oil price.
VAT is a set percentage, so it only increases the impact of the underlying changes in fuel price to a very minor extent, relatively.

I.e. if the underlying sale price and duty of petrol increases by 10% from 100p to 110p, the actual pump price of the fuel increases from 117.5p to 129.25p, also an increase of 10%.

The 10% price rise in money terms would be 10p if no VAT were applied or 11.75p with VAT applied, so not a significant difference when compared to the volatility of the price of oil and the £:$ exchange rate over the past 2 years.


anonymous-user

84 months

Friday 25th June 2010
quotequote all
Came across this fuel price calculator recently which included the tax paid aspect of fuel, does make you wince in how much they are using the motorist as a cash cow

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/petrol-bills-calculat...