Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Morgan Plus Four, Supersport & Plus Six (CX & CXV Generation Vehicles) UK car tax on CX Plus Four - bit of a rant

<Rant on>
Just had to renew the car tax on two of my cars:

Never mind all the other craziness with taxes in the UK, it's absolutely nuts that due to the difference in "price" the Morgan costs GBP440 per year more than my older Golf R

2023 Plus Four: 2 litre 4 cylinder turbo engine GBP640 per year

2018 Golf R: 2 litre 4 cylinder turbo engine GBP200 per year

The penalty for an "expensive" car (that is over GBP40k) is GBP440 per year for 5 years or so. In terms of engine size and impact on the roads - (ignoring the impact of the roads on my cars; 3 new wheels on the Golf) - they are very similar.

Literally no *rational* justification for the additional *road* tax on the Morgan.

This is an open air mental asylum being run by the inmates!
<Rant off>

I'm definitely not a fan of pay per mile either, just FYI

And breathe...........

Yes it seems to have got very arbitrary over recent years. Fortunately my Plus Four is a 2020, and next time I tax it the surcharge will have expired and it will be far more reasonable - around £200 I think? Likewise the BMW i3 Electric that my wife uses is £200 per year? And my daily - a BMW 740LD is around 200. The final car in the garage is a 2010 Defender 90 2.4tdci Soft top (fortunately converted from a pick up - and classified as a "commercial) which is £350 per year, but would be double that if it were classified as a passenger car.

My EV was £0, now £200 plus it's eligible for the "luxury tax" of £440 per year. That's after paying tax on income, so it's like having £1000 nicked off you for the first five years. Fortunately, the car is now entering it's fifth year so it will likely only get caught for one year at the higher rate ... unlike the Mog, which will have to wait until 2028 to lose the "luxury" element. I pop the car on SORN for a couple of months over winter which recovers £100.

We do already have a pay per mile tax on fuel.

If you are a 40% tax payer (could even be 45%), which is increasingly probable due to the state pension being taxable income and if you now live off hard earned savings, at the marginal rate, which is where the fun spending often sits, you can pay 40% on the initial income which was put into savings (there used to be no cap on tax relief on investment into pensions, but there is now). Then, in retirement, 40% on interest / capital gain as you draw down your savings or InheritanceTax, if you leave any behind,. Then when you spend it, there's VAT @20%. You can be left with as little as 29% of what you actually earned, or the state gets 71%, plus employer and employee National Insurance on the original salary. Then there's road tax, council tax and dividend tax (which is witheld even in ISAs) eating into it further. No wonder there's an industry around tax planning. And, it's still not enough to meet the state's costs, so government debt grows.

Don't get me started!

Drift Alert ….
Tears of Joy from labour Neil A, list that lot of vehicles and no sympathy will be shown !
Piquet, love your bamboo i3, is it as good to own and drive as it looks? It might fit my small drive so tempted.
Taxes only ever go one way, or new ones invented.
Trying to remember what democracy is. Isn’t the government supposed to ‘work’ for us. Sadly it knows better than us ……what is in our best interest.
The thing that has peed me off to the point of total frustration is why we’re those scroats that killed the 2 police officers out amongst the general public.
My wife for the first time in a long time expressed virtually no sympathy or compassion about their deaths. ‘Low level’ ? If you had a friend or relative killed by a e scooter driver, chipped to do 30, illegal on the road, kill them, how would you feel about the rules we make and never enforce?
Let’s hope we stay healthy enough to pay our taxes . MM

Crazy system. My 2018 3.7 V6 Roadster now has annual VED at standard rate of £200 after suffering six years at inflated luxury car rate, earlier versions with exactly the same engine stuck at nearly £600 I believe

Hence Labour's Rachel Reeves, possible, justification to add a 3p per mile tax, starting April 1st 2028 on EVs.

In the first instance they try to incentivise EV take-up and then they realise they are loosing tax on fuel to EV owners... lets ignore the 'luxury' tax bump on vehicles over £40k and the rate EV owners pay at fast chargers, and the tax on home services, etc, etc.

I didnt realise until i recently bought an EV but the luxury threshold for EVs is 50k, 10k above the ICE price.

Road tax should be based on weight, and footprint. That's what impacts on the road. Emissions in the UK is irrelevant globally.

Whilst I subscribe in part to your arguement, surely road useage also impacts the road and at what time of day (whilst fuel duty does generate further revenues to in part compensate) surely when, where and how far you travel aka a mileage charge would be more equitable. High mileage users and commuiters which cause untold delays, impact the road structure and the environment more than a casual user and should pay more heavily/bear a heavier burden for the pleasure. The continuous stpo starting of commuter traffic 9braling and moving off) must be more damaging than moving traffic...but have no empirical evidence to support that.

What has the relative value of the car and increased RFL got to do with maintaining the roads other than being easy prey to tax even further.

I just don't think that mileage is a simple metric to work with, because it's wide open for abuse. Where a car can be clocked, it will be. Even with a tracker, there will be those capable of fixing the numbers. And trailered cars would show distance covered without being driven.

If you can afford a Morgan, you are rich and therefore the tax collector must suck greedily on your nipples to feed the poor and the feckless.

...but Dave, soon trackers will be mandatory on all new vehicles and installed on older ones at time of MOT...





(ps - as I'm sure you're aware, modern trackers are intelligent enough to know when a vehicle is moving without the engine on (your trailer example) and therefore Rachel will let you off paying for those miles (or will she because that trailer is still taking up 'road space' )

Simple solution, ]just put camera's on every street corner............whilst they may be subject to vandalism, should be able to capture vehicle movements, but then fake/cloned plates will be used..................

If you can afford a Morgan you have entered often into a bottomless pit of never ending expenditure (compared to many other cars) and actually should be given a discount for supporting British Industry and it's supply chains........Morgan ownership shoud be recognised and appreciaited for it's ongoing contribution, intentional or otherwise, to the UK economy.

People will always try and often get round certain taxes and costs. There are bright criminals out there who will hack cost per mile. Or we all rush out and drive when the system goes down ! People started to park their cars in their front gardens when parking permits came in . Result rain run off issues, Increased parking permit costs for my second car, so it now sits on a snug drive with no wall. I didn’t rebuild it when a vehicle knocked it down.. Taxing, it goes on and on but I appreciate new thinking might be needed. Our council allows flat developments but restrict the number of vehicle spaces on planning or will not allow permits for the flat owners . They don’t want cars or wood burners in London !! Great freedoms but it’s in our best interests.
MM

Buy old stuff. No tax or Mot to worry about

Like cigarettes - estimated up to 20% are smuggled into the UK.

The i3 is a relatively recent acquisition purchased in May. Its a 2022 with 28k miles for a not unreasonable £11.5k. It very much does the job we got it for. It does all the local errand trips. It is very nimble, Outrageously rapid if you want it to be. Consummately simple to get in and drive. Very roomy for a compact car. Still looks good inside and out to my eye. And promises to be very very economical to run. There is only one flaw that must be mentioned - and that is the quite harsh ride quality. But hey one of our other cars is a Morgan......!

As for the general gripes here about tax take, as a retiree and one of the gilded "baby boomer" generation I will not join the general complaints, and I say this as one who pays tax at 45% - (although I do complain about the ridiculous anomaly that results in an effective tax rate of 60% on income between £100k and £125k caused by the loss of personal allowance).
Frankly our generation has little to complain about and much to redress when we look at the heritage we pass to our children - after being governed by mostly CONSERVATIVE governments throughout my lifetime - everyone it seems wants to cast aspersions about Rachel Reeves and Labour who inherited our post brexit, post Conservative mess.

My retirement income is made up from several final salary occupational pension schemes - of a type and scale of benefit generally no longer available to subsequent generations. These pensions are supplemented by draw down from a SIPP where my contributions earned generous tax relief, so I can hardly complain that I am then taxed only on the income withdrawn, and not on the capital gains made within the funds.

Tax I am afraid is the cost of a civilised functioning society, and with an ageing population profile, more of the burden probably need to be directed towards us oldies who clog up the NHS and sit comfortably with out over inflated housing equity, whilst enjoying frivolous retro styled sports cars!

Don’t forget the SIPP becomes subject to IHT from April 2027. Gets even worse after age 75

The "Double Tax" Risk After Age 75Dying at age 75 or older after April 2027 creates a heavy tax burden:Inheritance Tax (IHT): The estate pays 40% tax on the pension value that sits above the standard tax-free threshold (usually £325,000).Income Tax: Beneficiaries must also pay Income Tax at their personal rate (up to 45%) when they withdraw the money from the inherited pension.Combined Impact: The total tax taken by the government can exceed 60% of the pension's original value because both taxes apply.

I do smile at this, the Governments have allowed your contributions to the pension pot to be free of income tax, your employees contributions were allowable expense against Corporation tax, a massive hit to the Exchequer. As long as your pot is with in the lifetime limit you can take 25% free of any taxes. not just on the value of your contribution but the entire pot including your employers contributions which most schemes tend to be the lion's share,of the contributions...............But people have tried to use the genereous pension allowances for inheritance tax avoidance and now the death duties taxation have caught up with those shemes and put all your estate whether it be cash, property, pension on a catch everything basis of taxation..

Why should an estate which has money stashed away in a pension pot be treated any differently to other assets eg house, shares, cash upon your death, seems unjust to those that don't have money in pension pots but in their house or whatever.....it now .seems more equitable to me.....it's an entirely different debate about the existence of death duties,.....but if we are to have them, then its applied equitably to everything.

The total cost to the UK Exchequer of tax and National Insurance relief on pension contributions is estimated at £59.1 billion for the 2025/26 tax year, according to HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC)

Breakdown of the CostsIncome Tax Relief:

Estimated at £33.5 billion for 2025/26 (with historical breakdowns showing roughly 57% benefiting higher-rate taxpayers and 14% benefiting additional-rate taxpayers).National Insurance Contributions (NICs) Relief:

Estimated at £25.6 billion for 2025/26, which includes employer contributions and salary sacrifice arrangements.

That £59.1 bn per year in tax relief would help finance and sort a lot of our current problems out.....might eventually lead to not requiring death duties.......

More than fully aware of all you say, and given my previous comments and the excellent contribution by John Harris above, you will not be surprised when I offer no objection to the HMRC changes to SIPP's that you have outlined, even if those changes are contrary to my own self interests.

The changes you mention have probably encouraged a worthwhile (for the economy) change in strategy amongst many of us with drawdown SIPP's. So instead of leaving a SIPP largely intact to benefit our heirs, the changes have encouraged me and many others to draw down on the SIPP notwithstanding the 45% tax to enjoy and distribute it now rather than leave it to be passed on after death. As I mentioned previously I got tax relief when I put money iinto the SIPP, I can hardly expect that it should not be taxed when I withdraw from a fund that has also grown exponentially in the interim years.

After the TFC it is taxed as earned income on withdrawal. Flexi access drawdown much preferred to the annuity option though.