Smoking, fuel duty and road tax question

[james_tigerwoods]

Listening to what the government has been banging on about recently - I'm intrigued about this scenario:

• All smokers stop smoking, everyone switches "electric" cars thereby using a lot less fuel and all of us drive low/zero road tax cars

What will that do to the Government's coffers and how much less tax will there be from this? Isn't it really in the government's interests for us to drive high taxing cars while smoking 20 Silk Cuts?

[Hedders]

If we save a few pennies by stopping doing something, they will simply raise other taxes to ensure we are just as poor as we were before.

That is their job.

[chris watton]

There will be a plethora of other punative taxes, such as fines for putting the wrong type of rubbish in the wrong coloured bin, there will no doubt be new 'Green' taxes as a direct replacement, as they'll the convince the retarded vocal minority that getting rid of cars, smoking, drinking hasn't had the effect on MMGW/CC they first thought, and they need to go further, and unless you're living in a whattle and dawb (Sp?) hut, relying on state food handouts, you must be taxed until you comply.

[davido140]

Duty collected on smokes is around 10-12 billion a year, so 10% of the NHS cost (about 110 billion IIRC)

Fuel Duty gets another 23 billion,

No idea about road tax, I'd imagine its small fry compared to the other two.

Thats a pretty big gap isnt it!

[Steamer]

They will do what they always have done:

Make us believe we should all change our ways (using your example: electric cars) - then when we've forked out for the new 'cleaner' 'efficient' technology...

12 months later...


Tax the fk out of us for using it.

Smoking is no different to road users - its still a captive audience.

[Dracoro]

The answer is really quite simple.

They'll put tax up on something else.

[tribbles]

There'll probably be taxes on cars using the 'wrong' type of electricity...