Talk Morgan Forums Thread Like Summary - 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...........

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

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!

...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' )