HIGHWAY ROBBERY
The government have just announced that they don't intend increasing fuel duty. To put that in perspective it is interesting to see what they take from motorists each year and what they spend.The numbers below are what I could find in the last full published years.
From Fuel Tax Duty (the Duty they don't intend to raise this year) the raise £27b a year, on top of that they charge 20% VAT (that is not counting the VAT on the actual cost of the fuel), that raises the total they receive to £32.4b a year. In comparison, Vehicle Excise Duty (in the past farcically named "Road Fund Tax", what it was initially claimed to be) raises a miserly £5.9b a year. So the Government raise a total of £38.3b a year from motorists.
Their spending on roads goes to the Highway Agency, who look after motorways and to local government who look after the rest of the Highway network. They give £3.7b a year to the Highway Agency and £1.9b to Local Authorities. It does not take a genius to work out why our roads are in the state they are.
