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Road Tax Communication
As DVLA mailshot every driver, why dont cycling groups encourage them to clearly communicate, in very simple words, what road tax is for (and also what it is not for), and who pays for the roads. Because it really seems as though the message is lost on a lot of drivers. Even some that I consider intelligent and thoughtful, seem to parrot the 'they dont pay road tax' line. Even after Emma Way fiasco etc.
Why are people still saying this with a straight face?
If you're new please join in and if you have questions pop them below and the forum regulars will answer as best we can.
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23 comments
Pollution tax. Call a spade a spade.
I am sure that I am not the only one here who is confused or bemused by this. Until the whole car tax and cyclists issue popped up fairly recently I had never associated the tax with paying for roads.
It was a tax, just like any other. Its payment didn't have anything to do with one expenditure, just like my income tax or VAT doesn't. It was just a way of grabbing money.
The powers that be are scared of putting VED on petrol because of the effect on inflation.
No, they are more scared of people beginning to question if that car journey is really necessary as VED won't be seen as a sunk cost as in I've already paid it, I might as well use it...
Oil company profits, duty on fuel and VAT on top of it all would fall quite a bit then and we can't have that now can we
And from October, there will no longer be a paper "tax disc" or whatever its called, issued, to put on the vehicle. So my car will be just like my bike! Yay! Problem solved.
Most drivers already know, those that don't... you can only communicate to those who are open to listening.
I'd rather just abolish it and put the money on petrol instead.
It's a question I sometimes half ask myself, but halfway through asking the question I remember why they do not. Divide and conqueror my friends, divide and conqueror.
It's such an obvious common sense thing which should have been communicated to the masses long ago, but they do not do it. Knowing how much hostility the average cave dwelling motorist (you know the ones that pass so close to you when the road is clear and it's a dual cartridge way) has towards cyclists for no good reason.
I sometimes think it's probably better to just charge everyone who uses the road, just so the afore mentioned cave dwelling motorist cannot perpetuate this fallacy.
They do, most everyone pays council tax and income tax...!
Some cars don't incur "car tax", just to muddy the waters. Emissions Tax. How's that sound?
Damn,,,I emit about 5% carbon dioxide when I breathe out (~1kg/day)!
Will I be charged per breath?
This sounds another RyanAir ploy to charge you more cash for literally breathing!
I've actually seen people using that argument with a straight-face: "cyclists produce carbon dioxide when they breathe"
You can try to explain the difference between CO2 in the existing carbon cycle compared to sequestered CO2 being released from fossil fuels but they just glaze over...
I'm not so sure. It's very easy for the "there's no such thing as road tax" retort to sound like we're just being pedantic and splitting semantic hairs, which does us no favours.
You'll often get a reply along the lines of "it doesn't matter what you call it, it still pays for the roads". At which point you get dragged into more minutiae about hypothecated tax versus general taxation.
This. Irrespective of how the tax is calculated and what it is actually used for, those who are too ignorant to understand simply see it that if they don't pay the tax then they can't drive their cars (which is technically correct), therefore it is seen as a tax to use the roads. Hence the belief that cyclists not paying said "tax" means they shouldn't be on the roads.
Yeah, it's still very much an issue. Look at the "Have Your Say" comments on the latest "Cycling is Good For You" story on BBC News and half of them are bibbling on about "freeloading cyclists" not paying "road tax".
The DVLA don't even call it "Vehicle Excise Duty" any more (at least not on the website). I believe the Campaign for Plain English got involved at some point and the DVLA now just refer to it as "Car Tax" or "Vehicle Tax".
I find "Car Tax" the most useful as it creates a nice obvious answer to the question "Why don't you have to pay Car Tax for your bicycle?"
vehicle_tax.jpg
+1 to Mr Crumpet ...
When you refer to "road tax" do you mean vehicle excise duty? A vehicle tax based on engine size or on fuel type and carbon dioxide emissions, and not on road use. Pretty sure road tax was abolished in 1937 and the fact people still refer to it that way is half the battle in my opinion...
I'm sure the government will start trying to charge me pedant tax if I don't shut up soon.
Yes I know exactly what it VED is , but thats the problem I'm trying to allude to. . It is still called just a 'Tax Disc' without communicating clearly what it is for (regardless of what it is called). What the heck is Excise to the man on the street. Where is the first mention of 'emissions' on my renewal form?
All I see is the word 'Tax' and even 'TaxDisc' ( https://www.gov.uk/tax-disc )
Without simply qualifying. in plain English, what the tax is for. and how roads are actually paid for.
Being pedantic about the name doesn't have any impact unless it comes from the powers that be along with a clear/obvious statement of what it covers.
Even before emissions the breakdown was just by engine size, but it still makes no difference to the nay sayers.
They just think that a few special cases are getting a free ride from their 'tax disc' and they resent it. They don't realise that the majority of road funding comes from general taxation - and that is the problem. Even if it was called emissions tax - they think *they alone* are subsidizing the emission free vehicles. Also , in their minds, *their money* is being spent specifically on cyclists for paint.. er I mean .. "infrastructure" , that gives them less space than they had before.
The exemption from which is a SORN - reinforcing the 'road tax' mentality.
This.
Call it what the hell you like, as long as motorists believe that whatever tax 'pays' for the roads and that cyclists etc. don't pay then the problem will remain.
There might be a political problem in adding the VED to fuel prices instead, since fuel prices in the UK are already relatively sky-high (due to HMG excise). The only way they could justify the hike in fuel prices is by underlining the abolishment of VED, and that would still leave the motorists thinking that they've paid for the roads.
A better approach would be a thoughtful public information exercise, perhaps infomercials during the highlights of Britain's Got Stupids. Along, perhaps, with big lettering on the VED renewal forms.
There might be a psychological problem as well.
The declared purpose of a CO2-based yearly payment is to nudge consumers towards the cars that produce less CO2. That only works when the payment is separate and obvious.
e.g. if you are choosing between new cars then a Band B car (paying £20 a year) seems like an obvious plus point over a Band D car (paying £110 a year).
But we're only really talking about a £90 difference. If you pushed that into petrol the impact would be lost.
I'd use a surcharge (basically VAT+) on the purchase price of new cars based on the current VED bands. We already provide a subsidy at purchase for electric cars, so it's an obvious counterpoint to that. Surcharge on large engines pays for the electric vehicle subsidy, an association that can be made so obvious that everyone should understand it.
That, along with a small rise in petrol duty to replace the tax disc would I believe produce more or less than same benefit, and be cheaper to collect.
I don't think a £90 difference has any impact what-so-ever anyway. For many, it's a week's worth of fuel, maybe two. I also don't think they associate this cost with *driving* the car really, it's more like the TV Licence, which is just one of those costs of living that come around yearly.
If you look at new car advertising in magazines and showrooms the lower CO2 cars tend to make a big thing about being Band A or B, so I think it does have the desired nudge effect at purchasing time.
But yeah I agree that further down the line it becomes just another bill to pay which people no longer really link to their choice of car.
That's an issue, but putting it on petrol wouldn't solve that problem, it would just remove the initial nudge effect whilst protecting the revenue.
There isn't really a problem though. Or if so it's the same problem as believing the moon is made of green cheese. There just isn't a road tax or any hypothecated tax that motorists pay for the road. There isn't one and that's it.
I had a white van man shouting that at me once and when I pulled up level to his window I simply told him there's no such thing as road tax and unless he was way over 90 years old he had certainly never ever paid any. That roads are paid for from general taxation. That I already paid VED on my three cars but none were on the road that morning and that I almost certainly paid more income tax than he did. I did it politely. He didn't say anything.
Ther road tax zombie myth is an absolute gift to cyclists in any argument with the anti cycling lobby. They bring it up and then you simply point out that there is no such thing.
This too.
A few months back, I (presumably with numerous others) brought to Mitsubishi UK's attention an inaccuracy in their TV advertising campaign for their Outlander hybrid SUV which referred to the fact that [by owning one] "paying road tax would be a thing of the past". Whilst there is a degree of unintended irony in that, the response I received stated that various advertising standards groups had considered that the colloquial use of the term "road tax" was still acceptable, and the ad still runs to this day (even more ironically, I saw it several times during ITV4's coverage of the Tour of Britain).
Essentially, all the while businesses the size of this are encouraged that the term is still valid, the myths that follow will continue to be perpetuated.