Benefits;
1. By removing road tax savings can be made without making redundencies, just by saving on paperwork for police, postoffice etc.
2. Divide the road tax annual revenue by the number of litres of fuel sold per year will tell you how much to increase fuel duty by so there is no net gain/loss of revenues. Doing so will make it impossible to avoid paying the tax as currently happens.
3. Those involved in administering the Road Tax can be reallocated (using the same skills and access) to investigating vehicles not registered as SORN but do not have a valid insurance policy & MOT. Pass these details to the police/PNC for investigation on sight of the vehicle or follow up at the last known address.
4. To get insurance owners will require a valid MOT certificate to be produced.
5. Road tax is paid irrespective of wheter you use the car or not. This is unfair anm only encourages people to use the car 'because it is there on the drive'.
Given that MOT & Insurance can all be done, checked and validated 'online' these days it should be a simpler process to manage than current tax discs. It will save money/bureaucracy. It will be impossible to avoid paying road going taxes. It will benefit society by reducing the number of illegal/uninsured vehicles.
Result:
No revenue reduction
Encourages the use of more fuel efficient cars
Encourages owners to use their cars less.
Less bureaucracy/paperwork for government & police, so saving money
Improved tracking of illegal vehicles and so safer for law abiding citizens.
Absolutely agree with this statement, in fact I have used the available 2012 figures to discern the figures to make this cost neutral to the government. By adding £0.18 per litre this will cover road tax revenues in its entirety before even considering the cost of running the road tax scheme, which will inevitably be inefficient and costly.
Further points to make is this will also shift cost of road maintenance to foreign haulage vehicles and foreign registered domestic vehicles.
In lieu of the tax disc there should be and MOT disc so that both the vehicle owner and enforcement officers can see at a quick glance whether a car is deemed roadworthy under MOT regulations.
Finally it will shift more of the cost of maintaining the roads onto those that use it the most, namely businesses. E.g a delivery van paying say £400 road tax but driving 100,000 miles a year @25mpg will instead be paying £3,273 in tax equivalent to road tax whilst Uncle Bob down the road in his old Jag also paying £400 a year but driving only 2,000 miles @25mpg will instead pay £65 and Eco Jenny in her road tax exempt supermini driving 10,000 miles a year at 50mpg will pay £164.
All sounds far more fair.
Other benefits? Older cars will once again become cheaper to collect which will bolster the restoration market.
There is an argument that business will pass on the costs but that will be partially offset by competition (i.e. between delivery firms / supermarkets).
All sounds so sensible which is why I fear it’ll never come to fruition