a couple of vehicle checks please

stickshift steve said:
The road tax works like this ... if the vehicle was registered after 31/3/2017 and cost more than £40000 when bought new.
so saying that the car was first registered on 01/04/2017
01/04/2017 year 1 the original buyer pays the ridiculous purchase tax based on the vehicle emissions , I believe the highest tax band for the first year was over £2500 !!!
01/04/2018 £180 plus £395 (this is only approximate as all road tax seems to go up by about 10% each year )
01/04/2019 as above
01/04/2020 as above
01/04/2021 as above
01/04/2022 as above
01/04/2023 i.e 5 years of paying the £395 premium . The £395 magically stops becoming payable and you only pay the latest general road tax price which I think is now £180 ish . I am generalising on the latest price but it is very near to this price.
So if you bought a car registered before 01/04/2017 you will have to pay the £395 plus £180 for 40 years !! (not including annual price rises.)
Click to expand...

I think the last statement is incorrect.
Pre-04/2017 it was based off of emissions rather than "luxury" status. So dependant on how much CO2 the car emitted, the tax changed. For a pre 04/2017 car the CO2 emissions are 234g/km so £675 a year, or on the R which is 269g/km, £695.

So yeh, if you buy a post 04/2017 car you can pay £190 a year and save yourself a handy sum of £485 a year. So hypothetically, depending on the person and their plans, if they find a car that is slightly older and save £2000 in the process, after 4 years you've wiped out that saving because of the tax.
For when I got mine a post 04/2017 car was an additional £5000 give or take, so it would of taken 10 years before break even and I'm pretty darn confident I won't own it that long. Obviously there are other benefits to buying the newer car as well, facelift, potentially the better infotainment etc, but just wasn't worth it for me and how I use it.
 
Cars registered between 1 March 2001 and 31 March 2017 was based on CO2 Emissions.
https://www.gov.uk/vehicle-tax-rate-tables/rates-for-cars-registered-on-or-after-1-march-2001


Cars registered after 1 April 2017 was an initial road tax based emissions and then a fixed rate, plus luxury tax for cars over £40k when first registered.
https://www.gov.uk/vehicle-tax-rate-tables

So mine registered May 2017 was £570 and now £180 a year. If it was registered a few months earlier it would £395 a year now.


It is worth noting an oddity with the luxury tax. The rules state "You only have to pay this rate for 5 years (from the second time the vehicle is taxed)".

So if you purchased a brand new car, unregistered, the dealer would tax it as part of the sale for 1st year. You would have to pay luxury tax for the following 5 years after that.

However if you purchased a pre-registered car (like I did with 6 miles on it) then the initial tax is already paid and therefore when I taxed it it was the second time so the luxury tax ended 1 year earlier than if it was brand new.
 
Thanks for the clarifications. The luxury tax makes no sense at all. The original buyer gets stung twice basically, first by depreciation and second by the higher tax for the first 5 years 🙄

I was very surprised to see that I'd be saving up compared to what I used to pay for my 2L Audi TT.

On another note, people in this country love complaining about so much but when you consider that in places like Brazil, the road tax is charged yearly at 4% of the value of the car for the life of the vehicle, you realise that we're incredibly lucky. The tax follows the car depreciation but cars in many places don't depreciate like in the UK and the list price is generally 30% higher than here. 🤯
 
WShudds said:
Thanks for the clarifications. The luxury tax makes no sense at all. The original buyer gets stung twice basically, first by depreciation and second by the higher tax for the first 5 years 🙄

I was very surprised to see that I'd be saving up compared to what I used to pay for my 2L Audi TT.

On another note, people in this country love complaining about so much but when you consider that in places like Brazil, the road tax is charged yearly at 4% of the value of the car for the life of the vehicle, you realise that we're incredibly lucky. The tax follows the car depreciation but cars in many places don't depreciate like in the UK and the list price is generally 30% higher than here. 🤯
Click to expand...

I guess the idea was if you can afford to pay X amount for a car you can afford to pay extra tax. I don't have a massive issue with the idea of it, more just the fact that they haven't increased the number since it came in creating another stealth tax.
I remember I got a brand new Golf R just as it came in, and I was fortunate as mine came in at something like £35k roughly. Jump forward to today and a Golf R STARTS from £44,500. Hell you can't put ONE single option on a Golf GTI without it jumping into the £40k+ bracket. You want different wheels, any colour other than white... that'll be an extra £355 a year please. Hardly a "luxury" car is it? It should be over £51k by now if you follow inflation and even that's too low in my opinion.
 
Yep, totally agree @stefan9107 Martin Lewis is trying to make a case for another tax bracket that has not been reviewed in over 10 years, the child benefit tax, to be updated as a lot more people earn 50K+ now compared to 2013. Very similar principle to the luxury car tax which I didn't even know existed before yesterday 😒
 
My father's RAV4 PHEV fell into the 'luxury car tax bracket'. You know you've reached peak tax stupidity when a RAV4 is considered a 'luxury car' according to the taxman!

EDIT: This isn't meant to be snobbish by the way, it's a lovely car for what it is, but luxurious it certainly isn't.
 
Cluck said:
My father's RAV4 PHEV fell into the 'luxury car tax bracket'. You know you've reached peak tax stupidity when a RAV4 is considered a 'luxury car' according to the taxman!

EDIT: This isn't meant to be snobbish by the way, it's a lovely car for what it is, but luxurious it certainly isn't.
Click to expand...

It's a close cousin to 'Fiscal Drag', typically associated with the freezing of personal tax thresholds.
Since they set the threshold for luxury car tax at £40k in April 2021, with 3 years in then it's closing in on the point most cars (with >150g missions) will fall within it.
Very clever tax trick with 3 years inflation making £40k car at launch equal to a c£50k car now.
 
MY19 car 57150
V6S Couple in Grey and with a GPF filter.

This must be a very early MY19 because the previous latest MY19 with GPF was 59000 or something. In fact I am sure I have seen later MY18's!

3 owners starting in Surrey, Tyne and Wear and Lincoln. No service history since 2022 but I recall your not fussed about that.

Possible flag for finance so make sure you get a full check,
Car vertical for example.

Note. Not a manual!
 
Mine now.bought from a big dealer group so I’m sure the finance is good and has their own group warranty for 6 months for what it’s worth.
Very good value as it was advertised in the lower price group on A.Trader. It only went on A.T last night and I was on the phone with a deposit at bang on 08.30am .Good job too as the dealer had 6 calls before I got down there.
Just got to sort out the insurance and pick it up next week .Cheers for the info.
 
Getting the ghost fitted this weekend and will also get a disklok.
I know they are unsightly but I hope that if there is a visible deterrent they might think sod it , its too much hassle.
Hopefully we might see some 1/2 decent weather next week so I can get somewhere in the Yorks Dales for some pictures.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top