I don't know why such a fuss is being made about this tax, which
compared to the overall cost of motoring, typically 5000 quid per
year, is chicken feed and is still unrealistically low anyway.

"Almost half of all car owners will be up to £245 worse off under
plans for massive increases in road tax, the Treasury admitted
yesterday.

And fewer than one in five will benefit from the controversial move,
which was sold as a way to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

The Government's own figures demolish ministers' claims that Budget
plans to overhaul vehicle excise duty will have little impact on
motorists..."

More:

--times-higher-previously-estimated.html" rel="nofollow" class="url" target="_blank">http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1033826/Nine-million-car-owners-hit-tax-rises...

--
World Carfree Network
http://www.worldcarfree.net/
Help for your car-addicted friends in the U.K.

Doug typed:

Heheheh, your figure of

Doug wrote:

"Dogpoop" hotpop.com> gurgled happily, sounding much like they
were saying:

I can easily believe it, for somebody running an "average" car, including
depreciation.

Of course, Duhg fails to notice that it isn't the "average" car that's
affected, but only 2001-2006 cars which are inherently cheaper to run as
the initial sharp depreciation has already gone, whilst the cars are not
old enough for the maintenance costs to have risen. So this actually hits
those vehicles which are least expensive to run, meaning it's a
proportionally larger rise.

On 10 Jul, 08:36, Tony Dragon btinternet.com> wrote:

He is right about the 5k. Here is a source which claims it's 5.5k

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2006/oct/20/motoring

This is two years old so it's probably closer to 6k now that petrol
has gone up so much.

This is, of course, the *average* cost and it doesn't only include
running costs but also depreciation and finance (the interest you have
to pay for a car loan or the interest you would have gotten if you had
left the money on the bank). It is that high because many Brits choose
to buy new cars every few years and those depreciate very quickly.

It does not mean it's not possible to operate a car for a lot less
than 5k.

Here is another source that claims a standard 1.4L family car
averaging 10,000 mile a year costs 4k:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2002/01/16/cmot16.xml

Both the RAC and the AA quote similar figures. See above.

Actually Doug, this tax would only encourage more motoring.

Why? Because a) demand for cars is very inelastic b) it will increase
the fixed cost/variable cost ratio for operating a car.

Think about it. People are not going to give up their car just because
road tax goes up by a few hundred pounds. However, all car owners will
have to pay more per month regardless of how much driving they do. On
other words, car owners who do little driving are penalised and
effectively subsidising those who do a lot of driving. Those
occasional drivers are going to say "I am arleady spending so much
money on my car; now I may aswell use it more".

If the government really wanted to discourage motoring it would
abolish road tax altogether and replace it with fuel tax.

Jaap "Transformer Oil" Everest wrote:

On 10 Jul, 10:08, "Jaap \"Transformer Oil\" Everest"
gmail.com> wrote: