The government make you pay 58.95p fuel tax on every litre of petrol. Then they make you pay VAT on the petrol. Then the thieving rogues make you pay VAT on the fuel tax too (11.79p per litre)! This means that
63%
of the cost of fuel is tax.
 
That's a tax rate of about
170%
(Compare this with the basic income tax rate of 20%)
 
 
Work out how much stealth tax you are paying:
 

 
Fuel Tax Calculator

 
Note that the rates above vary as the cost of the fuel before tax changes. See these tables to understand why:
 
Fuel Tax Table
The petrol strike of 2000 scared the government into realising that drivers weren't going to take any more, and they put fuel tax rises on hold, but when they thought people had forgotten, they put them up again.
 
Britain has some of the highest fuel taxes in the western world.

In the USA, the federal government impose a tax equivalent to 2.13p per litre, and states impose an additional tax of up to the equivalent of 5.29p per litre, that's a maximum of 7.42p per litre. In the UK it is 58.95p per litre. Which means drivers in Britain are taxed nearly 7 times more that drivers in the USA.
And that's without VAT!   (Currency conversions correct at June 2008. Source: What Car)
 
Remember how our government told us leaded petrol was bad, and thus justified higher tax? Did they ever reduce the tax on LRP to the same level as unleaded petrol? No.
Remember how diesel used to be cheaper, persuading lots of people to buy diesel cars? What did the gvoernment do? Increase the rate of tax on diesel.
 
Hauliers have complained that the extortionate tax on diesel gives foreign competitors an unfair advantage over British companies. Gordon Brown's solution? Introduce a tax on foreign trucks. Very clever. Now he's managed to anger foreign truckers as well, especially the Irish who have to drive across Britain to get to most of Europe. Out of the frying pan into the fire. But now even those plans have been ridiculed as a massive and unworkable bureaucracy.
 
The government must accept that it has made a fundamental error in trying to impose excessive and unfair taxes on fuel in order to raise revenue without raising income tax. It must move to reduce fuel tax. Nothing less is acceptable.
 
The government's recent decision to reduce the basic rate of income tax from 22p to 20p was just gesture politics and yet another indication that they are obsessed with raising revenue through dishonest stealth taxes that conceal the true level of taxation. They think we are all stupid.
 
In September 2005, the ABD proposed a sliding-scale fuel tax on which the rate of fuel tax changes as oil prices change so as to stablize the cost of fuel at around 70p per litre.
Don't believe how much we Brits are ripped off by our own government?
Check out fuel prices around the world: Our advice? Visit Venezuela.
 

The ABD policy on fuel tax:
Elsewhere on the ABD website

ABD Press Releases about Fuel Tax


Make a donation to our fighting fundHelp us to campaign against extortionate fuel tax.
Make a donation to our fighting fund.
 

External Links