When the Cameron decided to have a full-on review of policy in key areas with the intention of not really committing to anything until the reviews had completed it seems like a really good idea. Personally I think it remains a really good idea, but it equally, the more silly ideas that might have ended up in the reviews tend to be the ones picked up on my media rather than the decent ones.
This week's "silly" idea as far as I can see is the idea of a "showroom tax" on new cars purchases in order to encourage people to buy green cars. The reason this is silly is not just that it is designed to make cheap but 'dirty' cars expensive by introducing a bizarre sliding scale, but more because not that many people buy brand new cars anyway.
In fact, the kind of people that do buy brand new cars, especially if it's something like a Range Rover Sport or an Audi A4 RS, are already spending £45K to £50K. They're probably not even going to blink at a showroom tax of an extra couple of grand anyway. Even if they did, they might just pop over to France or Ireland and buy it there instead.
The end game of this proposal would not be less people driving X type of cars. They'll just pay more for them and drive around in them slightly more angry than they may have done before. However, the review also has a nmber of green tax cuts in it. I guess these are what you're expected to use to pay the extra on your DB9.
3 comments:
It just shows how intelectualy bankrupt our "leaders" are its tax or tax no other options and as you say if you can afford £85,000 for an aston v8 then £2000 tax means nothing
maybe an option less.Think also of the job losses, companys like aston dont sell that many cars and a large drop in sales would cost a lot of jobs.
It is painful how policy makers are so completely out of touch with the public that they don't even understand the basic motivations and thought-processes of consumers.
What is the point of only taxing new cars, when they are probably much more environmentally friendly on average than older cars?
Discouraging behaviour through taxation is a wimpy way to legislate and is largely in effective. If something is so bad it should be made illegal, if not it should be a matter of personal choice. If there is a real cost associated with a choice than the polluter/cost creator should pay, but that is generally not the consideration with many of these usage taxes.
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