It has been pointed out a few times that the November 2025 budget has many changes to taxes and rates but many don’t come in to effect until after the May elections. Are Labour running scared ? Their expenditure starts now but the taxes won’t be rolling in for many a moon. We will be borrowing even more money won’t we.
The charge per mile for milk floats and plug in hybrids had me scratching my head. While not due to start until 2028 how on earth are they going to implement this. I had a quick look around the plan, probably hatched by a 17 year old on the back of a fag packet, and it makes even less sense than I thought it would.
It is based on milk floats and plug in hybrids running on electric and thereby avoiding fuel duty, or in fact the many duties on fuel. This does rather skip the fact that we have the most expensive electricity on the planet thanks to all the green nonsense. The per mile rate is slated to be 3p for milk floats and 1.5p for plug in hybrids. The difference recognises that these hybrids will be using some petrol and therefore paying some fuel duty. Quite why they think half of your mileage will be done using charge from an electric socket is beyond me. It could vary enormously between owners.
The rough plan is this, when you renew your road tax you will submit the mileage along with your road tax. They call this self reporting. You will then pay the tax based on your self reported number of miles. This figure will then be reconciled when your vehicle goes for its MOT. You will then get a refund (ha ha) or another bill. It is not totally clear whether you report the actual number of miles on your speedometer or you estimate what your annual usage will be come the end of the tax year.
Cars do not need an MOT test until they are 3 years old so they have to come up with a plan whereby they know how many miles you have done in each of those first 2 years years, the 3rd year will be reported by the first MOT test. There is some real gobbledygook on the dot gov website about this. It is plain to see that they have not thought it through and basically have no idea how to do it.
It has been stressed by the government they do not want to use telematics (i.e. trackers) because of the privacy concerns. It is safe to speculate that the Treasury’s need for money will outweigh any privacy concerns and eventually all vehicles will have trackers and all vehicles will be paying some kind of per mile tax.
The plans also project that the rates per mile will increase in the future. You must all be shocked.
In order to manage all this, the government will need some new computer systems, let’s hope it is not done by Fujitsu or some of us may end up in prison.
Another part of this will involve when cars are sold. It will be like getting your meters read when you move house. Of course there is no mention of this in any of the details I have found.
All of this pre-supposes this dreadful government survives until 2028 without an election. If the grinning greeny manages to win it we will probably get 30p a mile charges. If Reform win it may depend on what side of the bed Nigel Farage jumps out of, assuming he can avoid all these racist slurs from his school years. I think he has handled it badly so far and it may well be his undoing. I refuse to contemplate either Labour or the Tories winning the next election though Keith may well decide we don’t need elections because we often choose, to his mind, the wrong parties. I haven’t mentioned the magic grandpa and his Your Party, its gestation period seems interminable as do the rows about its direction.
As a footnote, before this budget was even conceived the rumours were that neither Keith nor the Treasury SpAds had any confidence that the Chancellor was capable of creating a budget. To add credence to these rumours Reeves was questioned about how they were going to handle the first few years of a vehicle’s life when it did not need an MOT. She answered “Errr, don’t know”. It looks like the whole thing was crafted by Torsten Bellend and his mates and Rachel from Complaints didn’t take the time to check it all out. No wonder she looks worried, she knows she will be the first under the bus when it all unravels.
And now a second footnote. It appears that on October 31st the OBR notified the Chancellor, bear in mind she had little to do with this budget, that there was no black hole but they were billions in surplus and didn’t need any extra taxes. In what is typical for the vindictive Labour Party they raised taxes anyway so they could pay, perhaps bribe is more appropriate, their client class on Benefit Street with even more money. The reason behind that was to get the backbenchers behind the leadership. A couple of days after the budget a poll was released showing Labour winning only 6 seats if an election was to be held on that day, the polling was probably done before budget day. This government has no shame, taxing us to death for party political gain, no wonder everybody hates them.
© well_chuffed 2025
