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.