Eamon Ryan is planning to disincentive the sale of SUVs by increasing their VRT because they are not as environmentally friendly as a smart car. Minister Ryan explained that the government has worked to change the tax system in Ireland: “And one of the things we do want to achieve is [to] promote more energy efficient vehicles, to reduce the amount of imported fuel – because that is a big security risk for us.”
The explanation is that having SUVs is a security risk for Ireland. Everyone knows this isn’t the reason why the Green Party want to move against SUVs.
It is actually about the costs of steel, he admits. He is worried the SUVs will be too costly, so he will tax them. “I think over half of new cars being bought are SUVs; they’re very heavy and expensive… We’re going to see all sorts of costs increase unfortunately because of this crisis – and one of the costs is steel.”
This is not the reason either.
It’s about safety. These heavy steel cars are dangerous. “Having… the characteristic where the largest number of our cars are very large and very expensive, using a lot of fuel, there’s safety concerns as well around that.”
Equally confusing.
But really, its about fuel and not liking big cars – or cars at all. This is Green government. The conversation is reminiscent of recent Dublin City Council chief executive Owen Keegan’s comments about traffic users in the city. He highlighted the need to ‘aggressively restrict’ road space for cars in Dublin City, because the current level of restrictions have not convinced enough people to stop using cars.
Incredibly, he says, Dublin motorists were “proving a very resilient group with a remarkable capacity to endure long and variable journey times as they continue to travel by private car”.
And endure they do. Snail-like journeys into and out of the city with lanes removed and narrowed. Traffic lights altered. All by design. Yet the motorists keep coming.
The Green solution? Make their journeys even longer and more costly. Make parking impossible or impossibly expensive. Make their lives so miserable that they have no choice but to comply and conform; Or crack up; Or lose their jobs with stress; Pass the pain to their children as well.
Quite clearly, the Greens and others have learned from the privilege of kings where taxation was seen as a right. This is the nature of modern government: the responsibility to impose taxes is seen as an entitlement and a privilege that every party demands so as to squeeze the citizenry into conformity. The USC is the greatest example of a temporary tax that persists with opioid-like dependency. Why turn off the tap?
For the Greens, taxation is not for awful things like funding wars overseas as was the rationale of Kings, but for such wholesome issues as the ‘environment’, cycle lanes and punishing bad behaviour. All good things. And bad behaviour is, axiomatically, bad, thus it deserves to be taxed.
Except the government – and the Greens – already get a lot of taxes.
They tax your earnings – PAYE, PRSE, USC. Your house is taxed. Your car is taxed. When you buy a house there is a tax. Your cigarettes are taxed. Heavily. Your beer is taxed. Heavily. Your petrol is taxed. Heavily. Your food is taxed. There is a pension levy. You pay tolls to drive more and more roads. You heat your house: it is taxed. Your electricity is taxed. Then you pay carbon taxes. Sugar taxes.
The Green Party wants to tax you so you won’t be able to buy the SUV you can’t afford. It wants to tax you for driving into the city instead of paying the €155 monthly public transport fee (best value monthly integrated ticket) that you haven’t factored into your budget
The point is that government has no reservations about squeezing you a little more in order to progress an ideology, and that you are probably paying twice as much tax as you think with all the hidden charges.
This isn’t an argument for small government, or an argument against big government. There are plenty of tracts that act out that discussion. It is an argument against progressive, coercive taxation ‘nudges’ that are perversely aimed at making your life that little bit more difficult in order to impose a particular worldview.
This is not new but it is looking increasing like a clockwork orange. Taxation for something in return: that’s the social contract. Taxation to make life a little more difficult: it feels like the divine right of kings revisited.
David Reynolds