Abolish Road Tax On Motorbikes

found this on another site - if anyone is interested in signing it.

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/118875

 

This has been petitioned before, which the government replied as follows :

The Government has responded to the petition you signed – “Abolish road tax on Motorcycles.”.

Government responded:

The average motorcycle owner pays £54 VED per year whilst the average car owner pays £166. VED rates have been limited to inflation only increases since 2010.

Vehicle Excise Duty (VED) is a tax on vehicle ownership irrespective of miles driven.

The rates of VED for lower emissions cars are part of a multi-pronged strategy to help realise long-term fuel-efficiency improvements through funding technological innovation, regulating manufacturing improvements and incentivising consumer take-up. This helps the Government to fulfil its legal obligation to reduce national CO2 emissions.

Unlike for cars, it has only been mandatory for CO2 emissions data to be included as part of the type approval process for motorcycles since 1 January 2016. Therefore, it has not been possible to base motorcycle VED rates on CO2 emissions. The current engine capacity based rates offer the most practical and easy-to-understand way to reflect the respective emissions of motorcycles.

Currently, the average motorcycle owner pays £54 per year – a lot less than the top VED rate of £81 per year – and the average car owner pays £166 per year. In addition, under this Government, VED rate increases for motorcycles have been limited to inflation only, meaning that all motorcyclists’ VED liability remains unchanged in real terms since 2010.

HM Treasury

 

Personally I think every wheeled vehicle using the public highway should pay something towards using the roads, cyclists included.

 

I agree Proff, but when you consider the impact that bikes make on the road against the fact that some cars are paying nothing I do feel we pay too much. I always thought the whole point of road tax was to pay for the upkeep of roads, but the government are using it as a tool to get people to use eco efficient transport. Last time I looked Bikes are fairly eco efficient.

 

Personally I think there shouldn't be road tax at all and that they should put it all on fuel. Apparently if this was done it would only push the cost of fuel up by 1p, 2p at most and it would be the fairest way in my opinion.

It's self regulating. People that don't use the roads that often will pay very little, people that use the roads a lot such as lorries, buses etc will pay more.

What's fairer than that?

 

I agree this would be the best option for motorised vehicles, as my only grief with Vehicle tax is if you have more than one and you cna only drive one at a time on the road, (Excluding insurance for other drivers) but when this was first spoke about many years ago, it was not just a couple of P per litre it was like 20P a way over the top loading.

 

TBH Tom all Diesal cars / vans need re-banding and testing.

 

Paid for my Kwaks road tax yesterday - WHY are they still putting £2.50 fee if you pay by credit card??????? They don't get charged that by the credit card companies. Bloody cheek .