Can You Believe This Tax?

Our posters in England may be able to enlighten us, but I think this tax should lead to widespread tax revolt. This is worse than my tax money being paid to athletes who win gold medals. English drivers should get together and throw their GPS Big Brother units in the harbor if this goes through. The fact the government can track you is worse than the tax. See what happens when you disarm the populace - this wouldn't happen in Idaho!:-)

hey, i am still waiting for an oxygen tax, where every citizen has to pay to breathe....lol...hey, politicians will tax anything and everything...just try to get a tax stopped once you start...gl

Actually, speaking from alot of tax-paying experience (i'm Canadian), this is one that I would be happy to see implemented. I also have a problem with the government tracking me, but as my single greatest worry as a human is the condition of the planet, I can get past the "big brother" issue. Nothing, IMO, is more important than inititives that would reduce the damage we are doing to the Earth.


While I agree that the Kyoto Protocol is far from perfect, it is a step in the right direction and it was agreed in principle by the vast majority of the civilized world. Shame on George Bush for ignoring it.


Adam.

They need to reduce congestion in England so they want to discourage driving by charging people for it...OK, fine...but why not use the system already in place (just raise gas taxes)? Instead they want to fit every car with a GPS system, track everyone and send them a monthly bill. Note that the EXACT SAME EFFECT of charging people for driving can be achieved by either means (well almost because with tracking they might be able to further penalize those who drive during rush hour or in congested areas etc.--as if those people are doing it just because they love motoring away an lovely afternoon in a traffic jam). OMFG what are these blokes smoking.


As for Adam's point about the environment and congestion being critical matters I agree completely...but hey Adam, don't you think there might be other ways to solve these issues rather than installing Ultimate Big Brother? Especially if we can attain virtually the same effects by other means.

M,


If there was a way, i'm all for it.


Here in Canada, we have incredibly high gas taxes. We pay about 55 cents/litre, with more than HALF being tax. This does nothing to discourage drivers, as our traffic jams are as bad as anywhere. Also, the price of gas in England is almost double that of Canada, and they still have these problems. I doubt that using taxes to discourage drivers will work.


The problem, is that you do not want to penalize transportation industries, while trying to get the casual driver/single commuter off the road.


I'm all ears.


Adam.

I'm just really pointing out that the idea currently being floated in Britain amounts to little more than a tax to discourage driving...with some added negative side effects like serious loss of privacy and high cost of implementation. Whether this "tax" or another tax would actually work to discourage driving may be something of another matter.


In order to not penalize transportation industries, they could offer these industries a rebate of a certain percent of gas tax paid or an exemption. That would have to be less cost and trouble than installing GPS in all cars, tracking, and billing, and wouldn't have the associated privacy worries (though maybe they don't 'worry' about privacy very much in England anymore...dunno).


As far as other solutions on congestion and pollution on a worldwide basis, I haven't really tried to come up with any. I'm mainly just saying I don't see why severe loss of personal privacy would necessarily have to come with such a solution package.

What does 55 cents/litre come to in American dollars, like 32 cents/gallon?


Sorry, couldn't resist a cheap shot on both exchange rates and the metric system all at once. Canadians are too nice and nobody insults them enough.:-)

$0.55/litre $CDN = $1.55/Gallon $US


Of course your millage may vary.