I’d not heard/read anything about this until it came up today when looking into the new tax changes coming next month (£345 for a Mk1 and I presume some Mk2’s) and a forum search found nothing on the subject,
There’s a petition being put forward to have a reduction in VED for cars aged between 20 and 40 years old:
It’s certainly a different proposal to the normal ones where they ask for cars to be completely exempt from any VED.
I tend to agree. My 1994 NA has done an average of less than 1500 miles a year over the last 10 years and my tax reminder has just come though at £325 for 12 months. I do more than 20,000 miles a year in brand new (changed at 6 months old) NDs. Which is more polluting/damaging in real terms I wonder? I have no problem paying taxes but they should be proportionate shouldn’t they?
Signed.
I would love the proposal to go through but the sad fact is that every government sees the motorist as a huge cash cow.
They keep convincing people to buy in to the latest fad - ( low emissions, electric etc ) - then do a 180 and tax that fad like everything else. ( single rate VED in 2017 and next is the electric cars being taxed like all others in 2025 )
Just like others are finding - my 2006 2.0 Sport will be £385 to tax from 1st April for me to cover appx 5000 miles.
My sons Leon 184Tdi is only £30 to tax and he covers 20k+ a year
I think it’s annoying that the threshold for lower/higher tax is set at 1549cc. It means I’m paying the same as a 6.8 litre Bentley!
The road tax “system” is not fit for purpose, unless the purpose is to screw as much money as possible out of the road user as I suspect it is. The VED for some motorcycles is ridiculous. For example, my 2012 Ducati Monster 1100 costs over £110 to tax whereas my wife’s 2015 1000cc Ford Fiesta is £0. My bike covers a maximum of 2000 miles per year.
Petition signed.
Bullit is 19 yrs old and we do approx 500 miles p.a.
I’m now classed as Disabled and therefore Bullit got classified as my Disability Vehicle viz she has changed status since I bought her 2007 as my status has altered
So for a while I paid half VED then finally as I got qualified as ‘pretty cream crackered’ so recently I don’t pay VED any more
BUT I HAVE SIGNED
Because I believe in the Petition ‘Discount VED for Vehicles over 20 yrs’
Done.
(1996 Eunos VR)
Before I got my mx-5 I looked at other convertibles, one was something like 9cc over that limit, a tad unfair really.
Signed it for my 2004 1.8 Sport. It always niggled that I was paying more for the MX than my father-in-law was paying for his Sapphire Cosworth.
Keeping the old CO2-based annual taxation seems unnecessarily cruel wen you can go and buy a brand new gas-guzzler for up to £40,000 and only pay £180/year.
I confess I went out and bought a bigger car when VED was flat-rated.
The Bentley will incur the luxury tax rate for the first five years due to its purchase price. Ironically, so might most EVs from 2025, if VED is applied in the same way as for petrol cars.
Slightly off topic but I suspect many people are unaware of the huge tax breaks available when buying an EV through a business:
Businesses can claim the full cost of a zero-emission (0g/km) electric vehicle, in the form of a 100% first year allowance (FYA), against the profits of the year of purchase.
Once again the private or non-business-owning motorist gets shafted.
I was comparing tax rates for pre April 2001 cars.
Also new Bentleys use the twin turbo 4.4 bmw v8.
I’ve signed it, however, I feel that the government are hell bent on forcing these cars off the road.
I think they should just ditch the VED for petrol/diesel cars and collect the tax via fuel. That feels way fairer to me. Trouble with reduced VED for 20-40 year old cars, is that most of the 20-something year old cars on the road are wrecks, barely roadworthy, and waiting for scrap, and polluting more than newer cars. Obviously there are well looked after cars that age in good condition, and especially if they’re cared-for second cars doing a low mileage then the discount sounds very fair. But a discount would also encourage the badly maintained wrecks in daily use to soldier through one more MOT with another patched weld or whatever, and those are the cars the government would rather see off the road.
I agree with the general consensus that vehicle tax is pure revenue adjusted at a whim to maintain the treasuries income. The target, as always, are the mugs like us that are honest, open and trusting. Transferring the VED to fuel would make total sense, but then think of all the fines revenue that would be lost.
Jeremy Hunt changed CGT tax free allowance from £12,330, to £6,000 then to £3,000. It is reckoned this will reap about £1.6Bn p/a! I’m not being political here, I am just truly fed up of being shafted after a lifetime of denial, saving what I can and working hard to provide for my family.
I signed the petition, I sign lots petitions I agree with and some subjects even get debated and then they are totally buried and forgotten. I feel a rant coming on so I must end.
Taking my NA to Spain, Andorra, France and Channel Isles in 3 weeks time, looking forward to that.
Ade
Now that it’s reached over the 10k it will be interesting to see what the government response will be, though it’s still far off the 100k required for a debate in parliament. That would be an interesting debate, mostly because of the next general election and how we’re already (or at least round here) getting political leaflets through the door.
On another topic, are all MX-5 owners cynics, or just world weary? 
(I admit I also had the same view of in the thread).
Of course not,
only 99%
Anything that makes Madge cheaper to run gets my signature, I can’t help feeling if the govt really wants to reduce it’s costs it would be expedient to raise all motoring related taxes fairly with minimum effort then the obvious and correct thing to do would be and tax in addition to VAT so everybody paid per mile and heavy poluters that used most fuel would get proportionately taxed, no reason why similar taxes could not also be levied on EV’s charged through the commercial recharging net works.
Charge per mile is deffo coming.
I believe that all new cars from July this year MUST be fitted with a black box ( although it can currently be switched off )
The next step is forcing these boxes to be active 24/7
They say that the main idea is road safety - the police will be able to download the data just like a data recorder is used in an airline incident.