At 75p a mile I’d be £19,000+ a year, plus the current £7k per annum cost of owning/running the car, not a chance, I’d have to quit working. My town is in rural Scotland, high unemployment and no jobs here, hence my commute to Aberdeen.
Move to Aberdeen you say…well, my house is worth about the same as a studio flat in Aberdeen, so that’s a no-go.
I’d say they are ripping everyone off at 75p (think the paper chose the rate they give their employees for work mileage!) 15p maybe, that would cover the fuel duty and VED and a wee bit more for the cost of the scheme. The big issue though is would they reduce the fuel price as the VAT is now in the road pricing instead – my gut says no…
The saving grace for us is that we get to change cars pretty quickly via Motability so can be more agile than the poor sods who can’t avoid running an old petrol car nor afford the mileage tax – so they are effectively priced off the road.
Indeed, Rox’s rich get richer poor can suffer model comes to pass.
The ideal solution would be leave fuel duty & ved alone, bring in a per mile charge for electric vehicles to replace the fuel duty – by 2030 onwards we will all be in them anyway, so, no penalty for the poor in old bangers (but you can progressively raise fuel duty over the years to push them to 2nd hand electric) and everyone pays their way.
In life, it's not who you know that's important, it's how your wife found out.