Car Tax?!

Sounds like someone bought a car for over £40k without knowing what they were doing.

Luxury car tax.

First 5 years for any car that was £40k or over at new registration, regardless of what you pay for the car.

Also, is it a plug in hybrid? If so, you may well be paying twice for car mileage.
Currently, from 1st April 2028 eVED is being introduced. This is a tax on the mileage of electric vehicles.
This is in addition to fuel duty you pay on petrol. So, you will have to pay a further 1.5p per mile for every mile your hybrid does.

Not sure how it's going to work, but there will be details on line somewhere I hope.

You haven't asked, but my suggestion would be to buy all electric as it is a proposed 3p per mile.

Yes, it's quite ironic that VED used to be based on emissions, thus a huge diesel gas-guzzler would cost a packet; but now there's the added premium charge on dearer cars, it disproportionately applies to electric cars, which tend to be more expensive when new!

This is one of the reasons why when I bought a new Honda (earlier this year), I chose the HRV (£200 tax) over the CRV.

Before too long, I fully expect them to levy a per-mile tax on ALL cars - in addition to the fuel tax for petrol and diesel cars.

It will also be interesting to see how long it stays at 'only' 1.5p per mile as well.

It’s £190 for all “cheap” cars, including our fully electric car. You have an expensive car so the car tax is higher.

Well that is what happens if you don’t check. On the plus £640 is nothing compared to the ridiculous price for the car

Anything over £40k has a higher VED. luxury tax is just a colloquialism, just as "road tax" is.

I've just got mine, its £200 for the whole year on a Mazda 2 hybrid.

@loopygremlinDo you happen to have a disability? If you’re entitled to PIP, depending on the level you receive, you could get either 50% off your car tax or 100% off if you get the enhanced mobility rate of PIP

It's not actually called a "luxury" tax; it's the Expensive Car Supplement or something similar and yes, £40k is expensive. I've just bought a 2 year old 5 door automatic Mini with all the bells and whistles and the original price was about £30k.

I feel your pain. I had to replace a car this year because it was wasn't economical to repair. The tax on the new (secondhand) vehicle was almost 6 times as expensive as the tax on my previous vehicle.

Absolutely ridiculous, that's a huge increase. It's only a 1l engine as well and I changed from a diesel to a petrol

That is of course the historic list price. My 4 years old car cost me a lot less than that but I've still had to pay higher duty. Again for a hybrid. But my lovely 20 year old car which we have lovingly kept on the road has road tax of £450.

£40k for a new car is hardly ridiculous these days.

I feel your pain. My trusty old car finally did the dirty on me and went to car heaven. As I'm a community midwife, I need a reliable car. So I looked to purchase something relatively new. I was deep in to my car shopping experience when I discovered the so called luxury car tax.
What I find so sneaky about it is that when buying a second hand car (as I was) there is no definitive way to know if your car was over 40k new. I spent considerable time researching for a car that met my requirements (it's the family car, 3 kids, 2 in high back boosters so need space in the rear). I settled on a Hyundai Tuscon. I didn't mind if I got a petrol or hybrid. But it turns out that the just under one year old hybrid Tuscon I was looking at purchasing for 27k would have been over the 40k new. Just over. By a few hundred. But if I got the petrol model at 26k, it was a few hundred under the 40k - if it had no extras from new. So guess what I got? Make that make sense when they want us to switch to electric!! And since when did a regular family car reach the luxury car tax level?!!!
I very nearly made the same mistake as you OP, so sympathies. They really need to make it clear on second hand cars now what the actual list price was so you can clearly see if the tax will be levied. It took a lot of research for me to establish it for the car I bought. And I'd expect a lot of people will find the same when they buy 3/4/5 year old cars for 10-20k not expecting to be anywhere near paying luxury car tax for a bog standard family car!

yep just bought a two year old car. tax gone from £20 a year to £200.

That's the standard car tax cost now.

We fell foul of this too! Bought a second hand (but less than five years old) car for less than £40k and had no idea that the tax thing had changed. We’re still on the £640 rate for another two years annoyingly.

We wouldn't ever be in the market for a brand new car (or even one under 5 years old, so problem solved for us!); but I don't think £40K is a huge amount for a normal brand new car either. Not with all of the tech and gadgets that are standard now.

Still less than our very old volvo estate.