What's the news?
Some bloke called George Osborne talked about a load of boring economic factors this week, the large majority of which we can ignore. But as motorists, there were some key nuggets in amongst the reams of vote-winning fiscal flimflam.
The big news is that a planned rise in fuel duty of 1.6p per litre has been scrapped. Cunningly, there will be no rises in fuel duty now before the 2015 General Election, so make of that what you will. When they shove 15p per litre on it once they're in power again, we won't remember this sop to public sentiment, but there you go.
Vehicle Excise Duty - or road tax, in old-speak - is rising in line with RPI from April 1, which is no big surprise, but on the same date a rolling 40-year VED exemption is being introduced for 40-year-old classics, so rush out and buy that BMW 3.0 CSL Batmobile now... if you have a spare eighty grand or so.
Company car tax will also increase by two percentage points for cars emitting more than 75g/km, to a maximum of 37 per cent by 2017/18 and 2018/19. And if you have a company-funded fuel card or scheme but for private use, your benefit in kind (BIK) bills will go up from April 6. There's also an increase in the fuel benefit charge multiplier for company cars, up to £21,700 in 2014/15 from £21,100 this tax year.
Anything else?
Aside from some changes to van charges for BIK and fuel benefit, there's a £200 million 'potholes challenge fund' up for local council grabs. Each authority will have to bid for a bit of this cash to try and fix the 3.2 million potholes we have on our crumbling road network, said to be a result of 'recent' severe weather but more reasonably attributed to decades of underfunding and cack-handed patchwork repair jobs across the roads network.
Matt Robinson - 20 Mar 2014