Immense Car Tax Could Happen Here!
A draft law is currently going through the French parliament that if successful – which it inevitably will be – will force the buyers of some new cars to pay a first registration that could be as high as 50,000 euros (£45,000). Admittedly, the buyers who could be hit by this immense tax are those looking to buy a Ferrari, Lamborghini or other expensive cars that use a lot of petrol and put out the most CO2 emissions. Even so, that's a ridiculously large sum to add on to the cost of buying a car, even a Ferrari.
Despite the fact a lot of people won't admit it, many of us can be guilty at times of taking a degree of perverse pleasure in the misfortune of others, especially when it comes to someone else having to pay more for something than we do. Because this law will only affect the French we can all have a laugh about it here in the UK, can’t we? Well, I'd advise you to wait a while before you revel in the misery of our friends on the other side of the Channel.
Just think about it for a moment. If the UK government sees the French government raking in these massive fees from buyers of the most gas-guzzling cars, do you really think they'll think it isn’t fair and that they would never do anything like that here? They might not go as far as a £45,000 first registration fee on your new Porsche or Aston Martin, but it's easy to imagine a version of this policy being suggested by somebody in the exchequer.
Maybe I'm giving Whitehall too much credit for their intelligence, but my big fear is that they'll take this policy and apply a bit of indisputable tax logic to it to make even more money out of us than the French government will ever make from their punitive ˜jealousy tax.˜
The way taxes work is that you can charge relatively large amounts to those who have or earn the most money, but they are a minority. Few people will have sympathy for someone whining that they are being charged a huge tax on top of the purchase price of their new Lamborghini, so the government can get away with it and may even get a few pats on the back for it from the green lobby and the class warriors.
Unfortunately for the government, a tax like the one the French propose won’t really raise a significant amount of revenue because these exotic supercars obviously don’t sell in big numbers. However, if they charge a much smaller amount but on vehicles that sell in massive numbers the amount of money it raises could be very significant indeed.
It's like income tax. The government could raise the top rate of tax by 5% and it's questionable if it would actually bring any extra revenue in or not. Even if it did, it wouldn’t be a huge amount because the majority of people with that kind of income can usually take advantage of tax loopholes to minimise the amount they really end up paying.
However, increase the basic rate of income tax by just 1% and the amount of money it would bring in would be huge by comparison as most ordinary taxpayers are on PAYE and the money is automatically deducted from wage packets, and there are a lot more of them than people on the top rate.
The government could charge exotic car buyers a £45,000 first registration fee but the revenue it would raise would be dwarfed by increasing the amount buyers of regular petrol or diesel cars have to pay by a much smaller amount.
It might go against the grain for some, but this is a time to put away the Union Jack flags and waistcoats for a moment and pray for the French motorist for once. Pray that in the end, a French Lamborghini customer won’t end up paying 50,000 euros to the government after all. If they do, remember it when the government here decides your 1.6-litre petrol engine means you have to pay £3,000 or more as a first registration fee under the guise of saving the planet. Remember to head to DesperateSeller.co.uk for great deals on used cars.
