to think that 43% of the £2 per litre of fuel going to tax and fuel duty is exorbitant

[cakeorwine]

A litre of fuel is about £2 here. Give or take
53p of that is fuel duty
Then VAT at 20% is added on.
Working backwards

33.6p is VAT
53p is fuel duty

So 86.6 p of a £2 litre of fuel is tax and duty - 43%

When you fill up a 50 litre car, it's £100 - of which £43 is tax and fuel duty

Maybe they should look at fuel duty and VAT if they are going to make an impact on the cost of living.

Makes that 5p per litre that Rishi Rich "gave" back a drop in the ocean, doesn't it...?

it's not though... unless you want a govt with very limited fund-raising powers. And that everyone should contribute something to most taxation streams (VAT, income tax, corporate taxes, business rates, VED, stamp duty, import duties). Taxation happens because there are things the govt should raise funds to achieve : unless you don't want govts to achieve them.

Fuel duty being relatively high % of the price in UK historically stabilised the fuel price & shielded British companies from the underlying fluctuations in raw materials and made it easier for the companies most dependent on fuel to withstand those fluctuations. Cut duty % and the volatility of the underlying product price will hit everyone harder in the long run.

Directly subsidising a limited range of staple foods & electricity & gas consumption up to specified consumption threshold, would go a long way to help the households with lowest income.

The government has to get taxes for public services somehow.

It's not taxes which have pushed the price up.

Same for VAT on energy bills imo.

When prices go up, the tax goes up.

Fuel duty is fixed - so you always pay 53p fuel duty no matter what the price is

VAT will increase - so if the fuel plus duty was £1.50, you would pay 30p extra in VAT making it £1.80

If the combined price was £1.80, you would pay 36p extra in VAT making the combined price £2.16

So you can see that as the price goes up of fuel, the tax take increases disproportionally.

Why not get rid of VAT on fuel - but instead have a higher - but fixed - fuel duty?

You're not being unreasonable. I'm genuinely worried about how I'm going to afford the fuel I need to get to work. I live in a village with terrible public transport and my second job is on a farm in the middle of the countryside so no options for public transport.

£1.96/L here for diesel and that was at one of the cheaper petrol stations. Feels extremely greedy to be taking more and more tax, especially when it hits the poorest people hardest!

This is the problem of having a low income tax economy, tax has to be put on somewhere, plus we get a lot less tax income from cigarettes than we used to

Huge numbers were taken out of income taxation and there are some advantages to that, but what it means is that the tax take is low

Then we have the fact that we have a government who wants 'small government' so the shrinking of public services and resources for the community so income tax is not going to be much higher.

In one respect I'm pleased fuel has gone up so much - it's shocked people into driving more economically and not as stupidly fast on the small stretch of smart motorway I have to use regularly that makes me very nervous.

This is the problem of having a low income tax economy, tax has to be put on somewhere, plus we get a lot less tax income from cigarettes than we used to

That's true. People recognise income tax - and they can clearly see that in their pay packets

Taxes like VAT, fuel duty, duty on alcohol, cigarettes etc - I think people would be quite surprised to see how much they actually pay on that in a year