Pressure builds to scrap tax increase
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By Alan Millar
PRESSURE is growing on the Government any tax increases in the March 19 Budget. to exclude dery from Last week's crisis discussion of the recent acceleration in dery price increases led the Road Haulage Association's national council to urge member hauliers to bombard MPs with demands that Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson should drop any plans for a further rise in dery tax.
But it has stopped short of challenging fair trading legislation with any recommendations of the size of rate increases which hauliers should impose on their customers.
Instead, it will prepare a "simple and forceful" leaflet in which the reasons why hauliers must raise their rates will be explained to customers. It will highlight the 31p increase in the price of a gallon of dery over the past six months.
An associated organisation, Winchester-based mutual assistance group Roads, was undertaking its own lobbying of MPs this week.
Its director, Dave Allen, was leading a small delegation of member hauliers which was briefing Reading and Oxford MPs on Tuesday on the cost crisis which faces the haulage industry at present.
And the cudgels have been taken up by the Freight Transport Association's president, Dennis Hutchings, who told FTA members in Cornwall this week that a further increase in dery prices would be bad for the general public and the transport industry.
He said that the FTA had already told Mr Lawson that lorries should be treated more fairly, and that the tax differential between dery and petrol should be widened further in favour of derv. "The present 2.68p per litre does not adequately reflect the essential role of commercial vehicles which, in any event, already contribute £500m a year in taxation more than the cost system.
"Excessive taxation on the movement of goods is an unjust taxation on industry," Mr Hutchings added.
He quoted recently produced FTA figures which show that the 6.1p increase in the price of a litre of dery since October 1984 has added 2.5 per cent to the costs for a 7.5 tonner doing 25,000 miles a year or 5.5 per cent to the costs of a 38 banner doing 58,800 miles per year.
But the FTA figures also show that discounts probably reduce these increases to 1.9 per cent and 4.1 per cent.
The increases this year alone have added 1.5 per cent to the 7.5 tonner's costs and 3.4 per cent to the 38 tanner's costs, although discounts may reduce this slightly in some cases.
• lveco UK is raising the prices of its vehicles by 4 per cent this week.