Tax blow to heavies
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HEAVY haulage operators are in for a shock when they next pay road fund tax on tneir vehicles — the rates are going up by over 51 per cent following the Chancellor's Budget speech.
The increase for vehicles up to 10 tons unladen are an .average of 34.7 per cent but the operators of 20 ton unladen vehicles face whopping rises say both the Freight Transport Association and the Road Haulage Association.
A spokesman for the FTA .commented: "This is almost deceit; the Chancellor said that the rise would be 35 per cent and the initial information was that this was so but some people who did their .sums on Budget Day are now finding out different."
He said that few of the articulated lorries on Britain's roads would escape higher tax than the 35 per cent already announced and the more comprehensively equipped vehicles with more weight would be hit harder.
The RHA has called the new rates "grossly misleading" and it has asked for the whole situation to be clarified. A spokesman said that a 52 per cent rise could not be called 35 per cent.
A warning has come from the Chancellor that the tax rises are the first part of a two stage plan to push commercial vehicle tax rates up to EEC levels so that the European system of tax according to axle weights can be introduced with no further rises.
But hauliers will wonder if this is the extra charge for abnormal indivisible loads forecast by the Government's Green Paper on Transport.