Road Tax - Where is it spent?

seamus

Having paid my pittance for road tax (ah I love bikes), I'm wondering - Where the fúck does it go??

The only decent roads are the dual carraigeways and the motorways, and even some of them are in a heap (anyone who drives the N7 regularly knows what I mean). The grafton street side of Stephen's Green has become like a fúcking warzone, and it's actually not safe, especially for bikes. Most the other roads around the country are patchwork of shabby workmanship and gravel covered with a thin layer of tar. Is there not someone who has to inspect the work that the ESB, eircom, Bord Gais etc etc do before they can leave? The state of most of the repairs after roadworks - you'd swear they'd never laid some tar in their ****ing life!
[/end rant]

So anyway, where does it go? Does anyone know, or does most of it go to pay the people who delegate the repairs to someone else?

(There you go Neil, loads of new traffic for ya )

ShaneOC

I have spent many a long hour pondering this very question.

And I do have an answer.

You or I would spend road tax fund on repairing roads properly by buying better materials, tar, rubble, etc.

The councils or corporations look at the money and say "Wahoo - let's buy another digger, JCB, etc". So now they can dig up even more roads than before. They have to buy these new diggers because as any eejit can tell you it is difficult to dig up a road, whereas fixing it is simply a case of getting a shovel of tar, putting it in a hole in the road and tapping it in with the shovel. The only possible way that this could not work is if it ever rained. And like that's going to happen here...

Borzoi

It's just goes into that big melting pot of central funds.

So no there is no correlation between road tax, petrol tax, petrol excise duty, vat on cars, VRT on cars and the state of the roads.

Hence- crap roads.

sceptre

^what Borzio said.

All tax collected by the government goes into the central fund (it's actually written into the constitution so won't be changed any time soon)

Now, on the other hand, they promised us that any tax collected on plastic bags would be spent on environmental protection and promotion. If you believe that, they can allocate a specific incoming tax to a specific outgoing fund. Reasonably hard, though, given how the book of estimates works.

In an ideal world, the incoming road tax would actually go towards maintaining roads, given that this is where most people either believe it is spent or wish it was.

And I've real sympathy for you Seamus, as well as other people on bikes. I find many roads intolerable in the car - if I was driving a bike I'd be wrecked from it on the roads - as well as nervous as hell

Harmo

Me wonders why do we llive in a country were Thugs and idiots are in power and the clever people hav no power............



Road Tax go's into the pockets of our "Goverment" from there it is transfered to offshore bank accounts.

mike65

As far I understand the road tax fund goes not into central government but local government not just to patch up local
roads but to fund everything which falls within thier remit,
(managing land-fills, street funiture etc). National routes are funded by income tax. While posh roads of which hardly any are being built are to be funded by PPP/Europe mix until the EU money runs out.

Mike.

Rebel18

The money also goes towards the hardworking civil servants at the motor tax office.

rymus

Originally posted by Rebel18
The money also goes towards the hardworking civil servants at the motor tax office.

and dont forget tea-bags... they need to keep their tea-bag stock up in those little huts the corpo are always seen in

sceptre

Originally posted by rymus
and dont forget tea-bags... they need to keep their tea-bag stock up in those little huts the corpo are always seen in

...ah well, if you're going to be that way about the thread started by seamus (who is *very* serious and always asks serious questions)...

don't forget the marietta biscuits and the generic butterspread

OLDYELLAR

I am so annoyed , i sent up for my road tax the other day . the fee was 31 euro , but being usure of the fee and trying to stay on the safe side , i sent up 32 euro . well this morning , i got the form the fee , the lot back , and a note saying my current fee was 34 euro , that i owed them a petty 2 euro for havin the bike registered before taxing it , and i would`nt mind but the only reason i was waiting to tax her is because i had to wait for my new insurance cert to be sent out , because you need this in order to tax it .aw man the system is a dog , i said it before and i`ll say it again "down with the system"!

Victor

Originally posted by seamus Having paid my pittance for road tax (ah I love bikes), I'm wondering - Where the fúck does it go??

Central government. Constitutionally, the government can only put taxes into one fund. It can however attribute user charges to specific purposes (PRSI, Health Levy, plastic bag levy, semi-state income, local authority / health board charges and the like).

Originally posted by seamus The only decent roads are the dual carraigeways and the motorways, and even some of them are in a heap (anyone who drives the N7 regularly knows what I mean).

Not necessarily a fair point. Look at some of the (dare I say older) sections of upgraded national routes (those with 2 lanes + 2 hard shoulders). In most other countries, these would be without the hard shoulders. Cork-Macroom and Middleton-Youghal come to mind. In fact if you buy a Michelin map of Ireland, you will notice a distinct pattern of good roads connecting main towns inside a county as opposed to between counties.

The UK has about four times as much road as we do (371,603km -v- 87,043km), but has 15.5 times the population (59,647,790-v- 3,840,838). Every person here has to finance 23m of road against 6m in the UK. While some are needed for agriculture, there is simply too much to maintain.

Originally posted by seamus The grafton street side of Stephen's Green has become like a fúcking warzone, and it's actually not safe, especially for bikes.

Teh road works are service diversions for Luas. Why people (in cars) still use this route is beyond me.

Originally posted by seamus Most the other roads around the country are patchwork of shabby workmanship and gravel covered with a thin layer of tar.

Well, welcome to a low tax country.

Originally posted by seamus Is there not someone who has to inspect the work that the ESB, eircom, Bord Gais etc etc do before they can leave? The state of most of the repairs after roadworks - you'd swear they'd never laid some tar in their ****ing life!

Because they are temporary repairs. Utilities were not entitled to do permanent repairs, that are the responsibility of Road Authorities (I understand changes were made in the Communications Bill 2002).

Originally posted by seamus ... or does most of it go to pay the people who delegate the repairs to someone else?

An amount does, but with the atrophying of the direct works section of local authorities, this is less and less.

Originally posted by mike65
As far I understand the road tax fund goes not into central government but local government not just to patch up local roads but to fund everything which falls within thier remit, (managing land-fills, street funiture etc).

For Road Tax, local government merely acts as a collection agent for central government (because local government are the roads authority and either own the road of have it in their charge).

Originally posted by mike65
National routes are funded by income tax.

National routes are funded by the Exchequer -> the Department of Environment and Local Government -> the National Roads Authority -> Local Government -> direct works / contractors

Originally posted by mike65
While posh roads of which hardly any are being built are to be funded by PPP/Europe mix until the EU money runs out.

Some routes are still being financed out of the 85% EU Regional fund (85% EU, 15% government / PPP). This percentage is lower on newer projects. The only "new" PPP project up and running is the second Westlink Bridge.