'Heavy vehicles are overtaxed'
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GOVERNMENT figures show that there is now no case for any increase in the taxation levels for commercial vehicles, claimed Freight Transport Association deputy director general Garry Turvey last week.
Speaking at the FTA's Merseyside division annual general meeting, he said that figures used to support the Government's Green Paper on Transport had been suspect at the time, but since then a 30 per cent increase in costs and cuts in road building had taken the doubt away. He told the meeting that the FTA had calculated that heavy vehicles were paying 20 per cent more than the cost to the nation of keeping them on the road.
Commercial vehicles generally were paying over £1.50 for each a of road maintenance and building costs that are attributed to them.
"To use their own failure to control inflation as an excuse to increase taxation which would in turn cause yet more inflation must be a certain path to disaster," said Mr Turvey.
He called on the Government to relate its tax demands to the anticipated future road programme not to the costs of earlier years which has no relevance to the present.
"Overcharging road users for roads they aren't going to get is just rubbing salt into sore wounds," said Mr Turvey.
He claimed that most operators run mixed fleets so that any subsidy given to the heavier vehicles would be repaid by the lighter ones — and not by the general public.