A BUSINESSMAN spent an extra £7,000 switching to a diesel vehicle because, he says, a civil servant told him there would be no duty on the fuel. Mark Mapp said he had made the switch from his petrol Land Rover because of the misguided advice.
‘When I went down to Motor Tax ‘in August’ at the back of my mind I was thinking about changing to diesel if it would be cheaper to run,’ said the furious 32-year-old.
‘I asked the woman behind the counter if she knew if there were any plans to put duty on diesel.
‘She told me that people who had diesel vehicles had been overpaying on road tax from when they last put the price up and there were no plans to put any duty whatsoever on diesel.’
Both fuels will be subject to 29p per litre duty from 1 January: 14p to replace road tax which ends at the end of the year, the 13p fuel duty that applied to petrol throughout this year and the 2p added by last week’s Budget.
Based on that advice, Mr Mapp calculated what his costs would be once the new duty came into effect and believed, as he was self-employed and used his vehicle for work, that a diesel would save him money.
‘I sold my petrol car for £7,000 and bought a new car of the exact same model for £14,000,’ he said.
‘I’m furious that I spent a huge amount of money because I was given bad advice by someone who works for the States. I’ll be lucky to break even next year.’
A spokesman for the Environment Department said it had no say in which duty was applied to which fuel - that was a matter for the Treasury.
‘Any person seeking information of fuel duties should, in the first instance, seek information from that department,’ he said.
Mr Mapp said he had learned from a Guernsey Press article last week that diesel was subject to the same duty rise as petrol.
‘Even my fuel supplier didn’t know if duty was going on diesel and people seemed only to have found out the facts about it because it was in the Press,’ he said.
‘It’s not just me, other tradesmen have gone and bought a diesel car because they thought no duty was going on diesel.’
Mr Mapp said that with hindsight he had asked the wrong person, but insisted that he had tried to contact the States about the issue beforehand.
‘I had tried Frossard House beforehand and I got bounced around and no one seemed to know the answer. I assumed Motor Tax would know and be giving out the right information,’ he said.
‘It’s a typical States lash-up. It comes down to a lack of communication. Lyndon Trott said communication was a priority but I don’t think he has communicated this correctly.’
Treasury minister Deputy Trott said it was regrettable that some people appeared to be confused by the decision of the States to abolish road tax, which made no extra money.
‘We will not get one penny as a result of the transfer of motor tax to fuel,’ he said.
‘The impact on the user is going to be proportionate to they use, as opposed to what happened in the past, when the average motorist subsidised the heavy user.’
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