Yes, I know this is the 1st of April but I am too old and too fed up for such rubbish !
Can anyone please advise, when it was that the "powers at be" began using the road tax for things other than the roads. Is there some point in time that this practice started or have they been at it since day one ? Thanks.
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Pete
I don't know the date, but somebody told me that the practice of using road tax as part of general taxation was started by Winston Churchill's government.
Ian
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The date was around 1928 and Winston Churchill was the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Was he bamboozled by anti-car "civil" servants, even then?
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Thanks for the date, Tomo. Without the facts many things eventually become urban myths.
Ian
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Road Tax, or Vehicle Excise Duty to give it it's proper name, has never been collected in order to be spent on road improvements. It goes into the general tax pool and is used to fund such vital projects as The Millenium Dome which nobody visited, the World Cup Bid, which four fifths of the country couldn't care less about and placing adverts on TV telling us how many egg sized potayoes we should eat every week, which everybody laughs at.
We are such an ungrateful population we really don't deserve the governments we are lucky to have.
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To be fair, and to kill another urban myth in its infancy, the white elephants Tom lists were really funded from the lottery millennium fund and "good causes", not out of general taxation.
Which is why I stopped buying lottery tickets many years ago.....
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You big cynic. Be positive. Tony Blair's got a lovely smile.............
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So have crocodiles (and they're probably more trustworthy)...
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1910 apparantly.
Assuming that Road Fund Licence/Road Tax/Vehicle Excise duty are all one and the same.
www.roadsafetyuk.co.uk/history1.htm>History of Motoring
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Mark - yes - "1910: The Road Board was set up to administer grants paid to local authorities for road improvements. It's (sic) functions were taken over by the new Ministry of Transport in 1918".
But the money was then "appropriated" as part of general taxation some time later - Tomo reckons 1928. I wonder if the depression and 1926 general strike had anything to do with the timing.
So, for 18 glorious years, they actually spent the money on the things it was supposed to be spent on. Can't see that happening today, can you?
Ian
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The Finance Act 1909 - 10 stated that the revenue collected from the Road Fund Tax could only be used for road improvements and not for any other purpose.
Now, having had a quick look, it appears that by the amendment of 1949, then this had been altered and only a responsibility was establised, and provisions as to spending had disappeared.
So, there ought to be an amendment of the Finance Act between 1910 and 1949. If you can find that, you have probably found the point at which it changed.
I'd look myself, but I'm having a bad day.
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Sorry to change the subject slightly, but is there any difference between spending road tax only on roads (a good thing it seems) and spending speed camera revenues on more cameras (a bad thing)? Can you see a pattern emerging?
Chris
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Sorry to change the subject slightly, but is there any difference between spending National Insurance tax only on National Insurance (a good thing it seems) and spending congestion camera revenues on more congestion engineering (a bad thing)?
> Can you see a pattern emerging?
Yes.
Can't you?
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