Re: Transfer fee for used car is $11?
ARF is definitely needed in singapore. Without arf and coe, we cannot control the car population. even if you own a car, you cant get anywhere. So these curtails demand. customs duty and GST just adds to the entire lump sum. They can scrap it and raise ARF, keeping the lump sum high enough to deter buyers. It doesnt make sense to add 7% on the 20%, but to consumers, it's just one entire prohibitive lump sum, so it's not worth lobbying against. What's in a name. It's just a method for the govt to distribute the same income source between the books of different stat boards.
ERP curtails usage in selected areas. Without ERP, they will have to up COE or ARF, which will be unfair to those who buy car to drive from loyang to changi everyday only.
road tax was used to pay for social cost of owning a car, but based on old tech, they based it on cc. Now we have new tech, they based it on carbon emissions, which directly addresses the point, which is a good thing. Next time people mod their headlights to be ultra high and bright, or mod exhaust until super loud and decat, they should be punished by getting a whack in their road tax instead. good idea hor.
diesel tax is, in my opinin, a mixture of social cost (pollution) and the govt's way of keeping their petrol tax cash cow. In a very indirect way, the special diesel tax that we are paying, is helping keep business costs down. Coz in the alternate reality where we have no special diesel tax for the cleanest of diesel engines, then the govt will raise their diesel pump tax just to capture the consumer diesel market, and all businesses in spore will be affected, espeically those taking public transport.
transfer fee, in my opinion, does nothing except to encourage people to buy new car (???) which is why its lobbied to be scrapped. Govt dragged their feet for years coz its a crazy amount of money to give up, plus, you cannot sell COE twice to the same car, so they need to capture another aspect of tax income, which is from people who only buy 2nd hand cars.
One con, also in my opinion, of not focusing on specific clean energy rebates, despite the pros which the govt explained, is that without targeted technology support in terms of tax breaks, the corresponding infrastructure will not be invested by private entities. Alternate energies - with the expection of solar and hybrids - like cng, lpg, H2, pure EV, etc all need huge infrastructure support. If the govt now delinks specific techonologies from their tax breaks, then they should pick up the onus of investing in such infrastructure, instead of leaving it to operators to sink in vast amounts of capital in a govt taxation environment half-hearted to the cause of green energy. Those poor CNG operators a bit hong gan.
To show the world spore is not against green energy, they definitely cannot impose heavy taxes on these alternate sources (although they did raise the CNG tax to bring it more in line with the diesel and petrol). But each time they invest in green energy infrastructure, they are reducing their income from petrol taxes. So I'm thinking thats not going to happen in the near future. Which is sad.