£30 A year tax
 

My partner's just bought a 16 plate Mini Countryman diesel as she wanted the £30 tax, she's always like them so now got one, anyway.

I'm running an old 03 D5 at £265 for tax and she's making me wonder if I'm daft paying that. It'll take her 9 years to pay what I pay for one.

Is it me that needs my head looked at right enough especially with the state of the roads.

And yes I know it's not road tax as such it's an emissions tax but I'm old school and still say it..

Hmm this swayed my decision and I ended up going for a d2 for my second car which is in the £30 per year bracket. That made me feel like we were minimising the total amount we were giving to our government. Which is always a good thing. I too cannot get my head to transition to emissions based tax as I don't think they have it quite right. Mazda RX8 is into the £500 per year bracket and it is only a 1.3 🤔

Except..... your 03 will have little to no depreciation from now on, whereas that 16 plate Mini will lose thousands each year to save £235......

And so did mine from new as do they all

So you want to spend between 5 and 10 grand to change from a Volvo to a Mini to save £235 a year in tax? That's going to take more than 9 years to pay for itself.
And I wouldn't be reliant on the Tax system to budget for expenditure for the next 9 years, if that Diesel Mini falls out of favour they are quite capable of hitting it with a higher tax rate in future.

Read what I said right at the start

MY PARTNER HAS NOT ME

‘Making me wonder if I’m daft paying that’ - equates to the logic of wondering whether you should be changing your current vehicle, and of course DaveNP ‘s economics has to be correct.
Personally, I cannot see the justification in your capitals ‘shouting’ reaction, but we are all different.

I know what he means and the way it reads as as if it's me doing it, yes using caps was wrong. I also see his point I also said to her but her views are she wanted cheap tax and also always wanted a Mini.

From my perspective, I won't change cars until I'm ready to but, when I do change cars, I'll avoid one with high renewal VED.

This means that I won't be buying any vehicle registered during or after April 2017 if it's List Price for Vehicle Excise Duty purposes was over £40,000 since that would mean a punishing renewal VED of £470 simply because it was expensive when new.

In short, in 2017, Chancellor George Osborne effectively blew away the green aspects of VED and, instead, made sure that he milked anyone who could afford to own a car that had a DVLA List Price of more than £40,000 when new.

This did little in reality other than to damage the UK motor industry by adversely affecting the luxury vehicle market.

So, I'd stick with your nice 03 D5 until you feel the need to change it. When you do change vehicles, however, make sure that you're clear on the VED involved in any prospective new vehicle.

Two of our cars are £30/year to Tax and it's just 'nice' to save on Road Tax.

Mine is almost £30/month but there's no finance on the car and no large repairs needed.

There's a few cars I've considered but have been put off by the Road Tax; A Subaru Legacy Spec B was always on my short list until I saw the Tax and then it just became a bit of a joke really - shame.

I was discussing this the other day and the only real justification for buying a newer car now is that you 'want' it rather than 'need' it. This is where you hear ludicrous justifying statements like "it was due an MOT", "it's Diesel so will be cheaper to run" etc etc.

Not knocking DT9's missus for buying a Mini but I'd say the £30 tax is more a little bonus rather than the reason for the purchase.

It's a shame that road tax doesn't take into account the car usage/mileage but we all know where that debate leads to......