In other news, the UK government announced another 2p per litre rise in the fuel duty from September, and from next April, 1p above 'indexation', presumably CPI, each year. (1p = £0.01). If CPI runs at 5% this year, it'll be a 3.8p increase in April 2010. The duty is currently 54.19p per litre, and petrol is also subject to VAT at 15%. This site estimates that 66.32p/litre goes to the Government, 20.98p pays for the product, and the retailer keeps 5.71p. VAT is applied after fuel duty so the 2p rise is really a 2.3p rise in the final price at the pump. Current price equivalent is £3.60 per US gallon or about $5.23/gallon. You do have to be careful how you design your taxes; the large constant part of the tax meant that when crude prices rose, our price at the pump rose at a much smaller rate. The peak price I paid was 119.9p/litre (crude at $142/barrel, Brent benchmark), while the cheapest since peak was 84.9p/litre (crude at $40/barrel). A 250% difference in crude price became a 41% difference at the pump. It hurt much less, leading to less change in behaviour, but also lower economic impact.
If the government follows Bill Ford's advice, it means that I will be driving my Ford even less than I do now. :madgrin:
I suspect CPI will be very low this year due to the recession. I think an increase in duty is to compensate for budget shortfalls due to the same recession and reduced tax revenue.
i hope Ford gets his wish. we badly need it. we as a country, simply dont understand what we are doing to ourselves. its like a child, you can tell them to not do something, but they will not listen. unfortunately for us, a little pain seems to always do the trick. force it on us, most of us would not do it otherwise
I walked through a fuel station the other day -- as opposed to filling up the car, when I don't pay much attention to what's going on around me. All the cars I could see waiting in queue sat with their engines running. Only high fuel prices are going to motivate people to actually think about what they are doing.
We either pay american,european and far east asian engineers to give use better cars, or we pay Alqueda funders, Rusian plutocrats, or Venuzuelan dictators, and Mother nature gets her dander up.
Well said. It's disgusts me every day to see monstrosity class (curb weight >5000 lb.) SUVs running around driven solo and/or w/minimal cargo and passengers when a more sensible vehicle would be perfectly adequate.
Why not make those mostrosity class vehicles have to comply with emission and crash safety standards that cars have to comply with? Would that slow their sales down some?
