Except it isn't in the news - government is trying to bury this

[Freckle]

Was sent the email copied below. If you care about freedom and want to avoid more Big Brother heavy-handedness from this government, sign the petition.

Apparently there is only one month left to register your objection
to the 'Pay as you go' road tax.

The petition is on the 10 Downing St website but they didn't tell
anybody about it. Therefore at this time only 250,000 people had
signed it so far and 750,000 signatures are required to stop them
introducing it.

Once you've given your details (you don't have to give your full
address, just house number and postcode will do), they will send
you an email with a link in it. Once you click on that link, you'll
have signed the petition.

Democracy in action?
The government's proposal to introduce road pricing will mean you
having to purchase a tracking device for your car and paying a
monthly bill to use it. The tracking device will cost about £200
and in a recent study by the BBC, the lowest monthly bill was £28
for a rural florist and £194 for a delivery driver. A non working
mother who used the car to take the kids to school paid £86 in one
month.

On top of this massive increase in tax, you will be tracked.
Somebody will know where you are at all times. They will also know
how fast you have been going, so even if you accidentally creep
over a speed limit in time you can probably expect a Notice of
Intended Prosecution with your monthly bill.

If you care about our freedom and stopping the constant bashing of the car driver, please sign the petition on No 10's new website
(link below) and pass this on to as many people as possible.

petition
Hope you don't mind me sending it

I don't mind it on the 'green' side of things but I don't like the speeding side of it. I'm good at sticking to the limit in built up areas etc but when I'm on the M6 Toll where it's lovely and empty I don't want to be stuck doing 70mph Yes I know it's the law but it's going to take me blardy AGES to get up to visit my parents, with a two and three year old stuck in the car. B*gger it.

Eve,

Your tax goes to certain defense programmes like Trident. They want to update this nuclear defense system soon. Depending on which option they go for it'll cost us and other British people btw 22,000,000,000 - 78,000,000,000 pounds. Not small beer money!

I am as irritated by congestion as the next person, but volunteering for a huge tax raising system like this is madness for most middle and low income people.

I don't believe for one instant that Gordon "Stealth Taxes" Brown could keep his hands off it.

agree to extent ch

so raise income tax threshold to around £20,000 or so and massively increase tax for higher rate taxpayers

(oh I do love saying this. WITHOUT FAIL someone always posts a breakdown of why they can't really be expected to survive on a mere £70 k...)

agree with tech

The problem with higher rate tax is that it used to be a tax for higher earners, but in some parts of the country that now includes your bog standard teacher and nurse, scraping together the cash for a deposit on a 1 bed newbuild shared ownership flat.

ok

higher rate tax is paid on earnings of +around £50k

Yes some teachers can earn this-my mum (now) does

most don't

if you are on this much, you should, IMO, pay more tax, irrespective of your profession.

AND btw

she is a teacher in london

No - the threshold for higher rate tax is somewhere around 38-40k I think.

Do you think the answer to society's ills is to massively increase tax on people earning more than 38k, when there are approaching 250,000 millionaires in this country

There is no London/high cost area weighting on tax allowances, or on any benefits, working tax credits etc etc.

The cost of living for many people means they have little disposable income, and putting more of it into the hands of the government will just serve to worsen the standard of living for many. Not to mention to further reduce the benefits of working.

I am staggered given the well-known intellectual capacity of mners that only 3 people (I may have missed 1 or 2, its a long thread)seem to have actually questioned the facts on this one.

I received this email at work and instantly dismissed it as spam. I was not aware of any proposals and as soon as I saw the ridiculous figrues being quoted I thought it was a joke. Seeing this thread, I tried to find out what was being proposed and Google threw up nothing except for rabid emails from the Society for Poor Abused Car Drivers and the like.

I remember something about road pricing being mooted last yr, but the figures involved were minimal, I seem to remember a huge outcry in the media etc & it was not persued. If this was real, I'm sure it would be all over the press. If -as it seems- there are no such proposals, the most frightening this about all this is how many people have got into a rage and signed the petition without check the facts. Isn't it frightening that people accept things just cos they are on the internet?

For what its worth, the piddling amounts that have recently been proposed as a tax on new 4x4s cars etc, has been described as being about 1/10th of what Stern Report recommended - what a green champion you are (not) Tony. If only he walked as good a walk as he talked maybe something would be done.

(Takes deep intake of breath and goes off shaking head and muttering etc)

Higher rate (40%) tax starts at £33,300, by the way, not £38,000 and certainly not £50,000+

...but if you earn more you pay more tax... its simple percentages!

and if you earn more, you buy more...so you pay more VAT.

You live in a bigger house, so you pay more council tax.

If you save more, you pay tax on the interest...and so on.

...and as for defence spending.. I am not even going there.

Though I would like to know why the govt thinks it can slap a green tax on us for daring to take advantage of cheap flights and fly...what are they doing about the number of RAF jets flying around and the 40yr old never out of use transport planes!

...tax the middle classes... its easier...they pay up and never complain!

joanie, i also thought this was spam - however the notion of "polluter pays" taxation is still worthy of discussion, imho.

(lemonaid - you are partly right. The threshold for higher rate tax is 33k of income, but that is income above the personal tax free allowance 5k, so in effect is just under 39k.)

This proposal is about shifting the burden of tax from direct taxation of petrol via duty to a tax based on the use of a scarce resource - road space.

The system of taxing fuel means that the polluter pays. The tax you pay is a direct product of the engine size and the number of miles you travel. If you are in the black economy, unregistered, foreign driver, etc etc etc you still have to pay it.

The proposed system will penalise people needing to travel on popular routes. Freight companies will weigh up the costs of driving on cheaper routes and cheaper times against other cost like pay and increased fuel usage.

Most people will largely have no option but to continue their road travel as they do now, but some will find it very expensive to do so. This will mostly just become another tax that they cannot escape.

A 4x4 driver in the country could have a lot to gain by this. A SMART car driver in an urban area could have a lot to lose.

Once in place, however, it will be a lot easier for the government to increase tax revenues on road pricing than it is at the moment for them to put up the cost of petrol.

The history of governments is that once taxes are in place, the temptation to keep raising them is irresistable, especially if it is by stealth.

IMO this has resulted in an extremely over-taxed low income working population, who have lost the ability to control their lot, and therefore a lowering standard of living for working people. I don't see any advantage in handing the government a huge potential cash cow like this.

You are quite right, and I am a muppet.

Just wait until this is shown on Tonight ITV, but I can't remember which day, Friday or Monday. The signatures will shoot up and I bet the site will "crash".

I think the London weighting or whatever it is called is outdated. Scotland is much more expensive to live in now, considering the wages are lower, house prices out of reach, public transport non existant or too expensive. And I bet there are plenty of other towns in England and Wales that are the same.

um, so I got the higher rate tax threshold slightly, wrong, and this proves what exactly? The point at which you start paying higher rate tax is not set in sytone.

I am saying increase tax for those on high incomes and decrease it for those on lowe (say less than £20k) incomes

oh and tax cars quite a lot.

Next Friday(16th) ITV1 8pm - Road Pricing Protest: Tonight. Looking at the campaign against proposed pay as you go road pricing systems to combat congestion.

fillyjonk, there is a big difference between applying higher rate tax to someone on 39k and 50k. 50k is a very good salary, even once you take into account the basic cost of living. Sure, there are loads of jobs that pay that, but the vast majority don't.

If you apply the threshold at 39k, you capture many ordinary people struggling to make ends meet. These are not the 'rich'. This is not the sort of income threshold that punitive taxes should be levied on. To illustrate this, a couple with children and one salary of 39k are simultaneously eligible for tax credits and have to pay higher rate tax. Surely that shows that they aren't 'rich'? The IPPR worked out that to be better off than on benefits, a couple with two children needed to earn more than 30k. So 9k over that is hardly the idle rich.

And tax credits are heavily weighted towards people on lower incomes. So people paying higher rate tax over 39k are already subsidising lower income families - if that is the way you choose to look at it, which I am sure none of them do.

I've signed it. My car costs me enough as it is and being a childminder looking after 3 under 18mths plus my 7 yr old public transport is not an option at all, even if there was a good service in my small town, which there is not, you can't get a bus to my house from town after 6pm!!!! you can't get a bus from mine to school either and you certainly can't get buses to toddler groups and even if you could there would never be enough hours in the day to get everything i need to get done if i didn't use a car.

ok cloudhopper

My point is to increase the rate of higher rate tax, and also increase the point at which the lower rate tax threshold is applied.

I don't see much point quibbling over exact points at which that would be applied, tbh.

But actually, if my system were introduced, the person on £39 k would only be being taxed on around £19k of salary, not around £35k of it as is the case atm.

oh and there wouldn't be such spiralling house prices, due to less deisparity of wealth, and people like me wouldn't be unable to live near where they grew up, which would be rather good for community, really

and YES they are eligible for tax credits but just your bog standard basic rate, the stuff that everyone gets up to around £50k.

Universal benefits + progressove taxation. think of the administrativbe savings!

Fillyjonk for Prime Minister!

Like common sense would ever win out. And thanks Furball, I knew it was on at some point soon!