Car Tax Bands

[steve gooding]

Hi guys

So I recently got my car tax reminder through the post, and it’s gone up again for the 3rd year running. Obviously the government trying to get me out of a dirty diesel Anyway, it’s now £155 a year to tax my 2012 C220cdi sport
A colleague at work also has a 2012 C220cdi, but it’s not a sport model, and his annual tax is cheaper at £130. How is this when surely the cars have the same engine? Both have the OM651, and are the same age. Are the sport models tuned slightly different so the emit more?

Cheers
Steve


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[davidsl500]

Compare tyre sizes and see if there is any difference. Larger diameter and wider tyres / staggered set ups can be enough to move cars up a tax band due to higher emissions

 

[steve gooding]

Compare tyre sizes and see if there is any difference. Wider tyres / staggered set ups can be enough to move cars up a tax band due to higher emissions

Fine margins eh? Yes the tyres are wider on the sport, and I have 18” rims, whereas he only has 17”.
Annoying though.
When we had our Passat, it was one of the first models to have the more modern common rail engine, but because of its age, it fell into a different band. Had it been 6 months newer, the tax would’ve been over £50 cheaper.


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[Droverunner]

It's all down to tests (some that are part of the great emissions expose) carried out on new vehicles to determine their CO output... which as others have said could be down to tire sizes and of course weight or manual/auto etc.. even carrying a spare wheel and jack or not.

Just buying a used Viano it was impossible to set any generic rules across models but I had to run the specific vehicle on the Gov site to check the stated CO g/km level to ID those that fell either in the £340 or £585 band. It was hard to make any predictions and as an example I've ended up with a 3lit V6 CDi auto in the £340 band but a 2yr older 2.2 CDi with 74bhp less could have been £585/yr

 

[steve gooding]

The other half’s Astra is a 2.0 diesel, 165bhp, same age as my c class, but that is only £30 a year to tax. I understand it’s a much lighter car, and no doubt pumps out less emissions (altho they way she drives, I’m not so sure ), but the difference cannot be enough to warrant a £100+ difference in road tax.


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[sonic]

It all depends when the vehicle was first registered, & the road tax bands that year.
My wife's SLC250d first registered Dec16 is £30PA, the same car Apr17 is £150.
Her previous car a SLK200K petrol 1800cc first registered 2010 is £300PA.

 

[Blobcat]

Fine margins eh? Yes the tyres are wider on the sport, and I have 18” rims, whereas he only has 17”.
Annoying though.
When we had our Passat, it was one of the first models to have the more modern common rail engine, but because of its age, it fell into a different band. Had it been 6 months newer, the tax would’ve been over £50 cheaper.


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And if he’d decided to buy some 18” rims and have the dealer fit them before he picked up the car he’d still be in the lower bracket…

 

[malcolm E53 AMG]

I hate insidious taxes, the current rule of adding £320 to the RFL for new cars valued at over £40k is a prime example. Another is the Stamp Duty on house purchases, very few people had heard of this house purchase tax 40 years ago due to the fact that it only affected houses worth more than £40k and look where we are today….

 

[Ron240]

The difference between between bands D and E for vehicles registered between 1st March 2001 and 31st March 2017 is £25 - £130 and £155 respectively.
Band D Co2 is 121 - 130, and band E is 131 - 140.
So this means there only needs to be as little as 1 g/km difference in emissions to turn a band D into a band E.
This as stated can occur for something as simple as larger wheels and tyres on otherwise identical vehicles.

 

[Droverunner]

>>> as little as 1 g/km difference in emissions to turn a band D into a band E.

Yes that's the situation with mine... it's just 1g/km under the figure that would make it £585.

 

[Ron240]

Yes that's the situation with mine... it's just 1g/km under the figure that would make it £585.

You will be saying to yourself thank **** my car is 225 and not 226.

 

[Rob7seven]

I've just got my tax reminder for my C300, £490. I'm not entirely against the idea of a "luxury" car tax, and I'm not trying to show off or impress anyone, but is £40,000 really a "luxury" car these days, you can pay that for lots of fairly ordinary vehicles, so why hasn't the figure been increased to allow for inflation? It's a similar unfairness to Stamp Duty and rampant house price inflation, the way things are going, in a few years even a Dacia Sandero will be £40,000, especially if you pay extra for the optional windscreen wipers.

 

[Ron240]

I've just got my tax reminder for my C300, £490. I'm not entirely against the idea of a "luxury" car tax, and I'm not trying to show off or impress anyone, but is £40,000 really a "luxury" car these days,

Technically you could say that yes above £40k definitely does afford a certain level of luxury in a brand new car...however you rightly point out that many cars are falling into this bracket that were not before, due to manufacturer price rises and specified factory options etc.
I am mindful of this £40k limit and how it is calculated, so at the moment I am deliberately avoiding cars that will be subject to the lets be honest about it complete rip off additional £335 on top of the standard fee, and both rise every year!
The way I look at it if you are going to buy a brand new car that is subject to this charge then there is no point in being only slightly over the threshold (only 1p is enough to cost you an extra £335 annually), you need to make it worthwhile and be well above it...if you can afford it that is.
People who want to buy a recent model nice and/or powerful used car that they maybe couldnt afford brand new are IMO harder hit by this rip off tax, because it is in force until the day before the car has its 6th anniversary from first registration, with no way to avoid paying it.
Having said that there is one way to avoid paying it - buy an electric car. The rules were only recently changed on that because above £40k was previously subject to the additional rate. This was scandalous IMO because it went against all the governments green pretensions and exposed them as money grabbers wherever they could get it.

 

[Craiglxviii]

Hi guys

So I recently got my car tax reminder through the post, and it’s gone up again for the 3rd year running. Obviously the government trying to get me out of a dirty diesel Anyway, it’s now £155 a year to tax my 2012 C220cdi sport
A colleague at work also has a 2012 C220cdi, but it’s not a sport model, and his annual tax is cheaper at £130. How is this when surely the cars have the same engine? Both have the OM651, and are the same age. Are the sport models tuned slightly different so the emit more?

Cheers
Steve


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

It’s all to do with what band the rated emissions that model type has been homologated at…

 

[Nigel Hewitt]

I think mine's £10. Hybrids were trendy back then, even Diesel hybrids
The bike is £91

 

[AMGeed]

The sooner the Road Fund Licence is dropped and a levy placed on fuel we all use is a better way to collect revenue.
It would halt non payment of road fund duty at a stroke and those using the roads the most get to pay more.
I see that as a far fairer solution for both the government and the road user.

 

[Rob7seven]

The sooner the Road Fund Licence is dropped and a levy placed on fuel we all use is a better way to collect revenue.

How would that be fairer to all road users? I think that a mass switch to electric cars will take far longer than 2030 to achieve, another ten or twenty years, maybe longer, but how are you going to get revenue from electrics? Your plan would only charge the slowly declining number of petrol and diesel vehicles. Somehow, a scheme is going to have to be devised to tax electricity.

Maybe electric power will take over eventually, but to me, the current examples with massive and costly batteries using scarce raw materials looks like a technological dead end, two ton family cars? Complete nonsense. I'm an electric sceptic, and until there's a breakthrough in something like solid state batteries, I'll probably remain one.

 

[mioba]

Battery tech in cars is the next biggest disaster.
I read an article on the elements in batteries and how much is being mined now and will need to be mined - mankind just raping the planet more.
Also seen the cost of replacing batteries was ca 14k after 8 years.

Its just not sustainable.

Merc should venture into pedal bikes.

 

[Craiglxviii]

Battery tech in cars is the next biggest disaster.
I read an article on the elements in batteries and how much is being mined now and will need to be mined - mankind just raping the planet more.
Also seen the cost of replacing batteries was ca 14k after 8 years.

Its just not sustainable.

Merc should venture into pedal bikes.

Not true unfortunately. We are using something like 60,000 tons of lithium globally per year (as of last year) for total requirements. Global estimated lithium reserves are in the order of 52 million tons, or just under a thousand years of current consumption. However that doesn’t take into account lithium cell recycling at end of life which should recover 50% minimum of material used in its construction.

 

[Rob7seven]

Battery tech in cars is the next biggest disaster.
I read an article on the elements in batteries and how much is being mined now and will need to be mined - mankind just raping the planet more.
Also seen the cost of replacing batteries was ca 14k after 8 years.

Its just not sustainable.

Merc should venture into pedal bikes.

As currently planned, I think the entire "electric revolution" is unsustainable.