RUCs to apply to all vehicles (incl EVs), replacing road user tax on petrol

Forums › Transport (cars, bikes and boats) › RUCs to apply to all vehicles (incl EVs), replacing road user tax on petrol

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#3400328 6-Aug-2025 13:33

richms:

As usual the reddit crowd are all moaning about this because of the private sector being able to sell RUCs and oh no the poor people.

I don't understand why it has to be outsoured to the private sector? I'll be more expensive as the private sector will only get onboard if they get a cut of the money.

Keep it in house IMHO and keep it simple. Waka Kotahi has done well with online regos, tolling, etc so I'm confident they can build a good system for e-RUCs.

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#3400329 6-Aug-2025 13:35

wellygary:

The ability to post pay and monthly billing, will basically see it become like a HOP card for your car, most people will just set up an AP to pay the amount each month/quarter

That's the part I like IMHO. Hopefully Waka Kotahi does this in house and then we can have tolling, RUCs, regos, etc all paid for via one account.

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#3400332 6-Aug-2025 13:38

Quite right. Who cares about the poor people when instead of paying straight to the government we can have a pointless layer of private companies in-between pretending they're in competition with each other.

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” -John Kenneth Galbraith

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#3400336 6-Aug-2025 13:43

mattwnz:

As they said it was going to be based on weight, I wonder if EVs may end up paying more due to them being heavier.
But they do need to get people moving away from these fuel hungry old vehicles and this move doesn’t help with that. Whereas the status quo does help

Not unless they make a major change to the RUC system.
At the moment the bottom tier is "less than 3.5 tonnes", so current BEVs will continue to be in that. The rationale is that anything under 3.5t has a relatively negligible impact on the road surface and its maintenance.
The contrary argument is that it seems a 'bad look' to charge a Suzuki Ignis (example of a very light car) the same RUCs as a RAM-1500 (example of a very large ute). And then there's motorcycles & trikes. There's going to be some politically uncomfortable decision making there.

Fortunately for Chris Bishop, it looks like it'll be the next government's problem so can be ignored.

On2or3wheels

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#3400338 6-Aug-2025 13:50

richms:

As usual the reddit crowd are all moaning about this because of the private sector being able to sell RUCs and oh no the poor people.

So what percentage are you happy to pay to these private companies as a processing fee?
"and oh no the poor people" That's ok, you're clearly rich so can subsidise them as they'll just drive without paying RUC's. You can also subsidise the boy-racers, some of who no doubt won't be paying.

NZTA raised this non-compliance as an issue when a RUC was 1st proposed for all vehicles.

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#3400351 6-Aug-2025 14:13

On2or3wheels:

richms:

As usual the reddit crowd are all moaning about this because of the private sector being able to sell RUCs and oh no the poor people.

So what percentage are you happy to pay to these private companies as a processing fee?
"and oh no the poor people" That's ok, you're clearly rich so can subsidise them as they'll just drive without paying RUC's. You can also subsidise the boy-racers, some of who no doubt won't be paying.

NZTA raised this non-compliance as an issue when a RUC was 1st proposed for all vehicles.

Probably a few % if the processes are automated, and I also expect that these processing companies will be buying the kilometers at a rate lower than waka kotahi will be retailing them for so the end result will be the same to the end user.

At least I will no longer be subsidizing the aqua drivers who are right lane camping or merging at 60ks onto the motorway.

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On2or3wheels

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#3400354 6-Aug-2025 14:25

richms:

Probably a few % if the processes are automated, and I also expect that these processing companies will be buying the kilometers at a rate lower than waka kotahi will be retailing them for so the end result will be the same to the end user.

At least I will no longer be subsidizing the aqua drivers who are right lane camping or merging at 60ks onto the motorway.

Why are you currently subsidising Aqua drivers? They pay RUC's + petrol tax.

mattwnz

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#3400355 6-Aug-2025 14:28

PolicyGuy:

mattwnz:

As they said it was going to be based on weight, I wonder if EVs may end up paying more due to them being heavier.
But they do need to get people moving away from these fuel hungry old vehicles and this move doesn’t help with that. Whereas the status quo does help

Not unless they make a major change to the RUC system.
At the moment the bottom tier is "less than 3.5 tonnes", so current BEVs will continue to be in that. The rationale is that anything under 3.5t has a relatively negligible impact on the road surface and its maintenance.
The contrary argument is that it seems a 'bad look' to charge a Suzuki Ignis (example of a very light car) the same RUCs as a RAM-1500 (example of a very large ute). And then there's motorcycles & trikes. There's going to be some politically uncomfortable decision making there.

Fortunately for Chris Bishop, it looks like it'll be the next government's problem so can be ignored.

Yes it is pretty much the next governments problem and I can't see any future government changing this move to RUC's, considering most people seem to agree with it. Even the Stuff poll is over 50% in agreement with National on this. I can however see some tweaks coming for RUCs in terms of weight, mainly because the old system was more setup for commercial vehicles and most of those were either relatively heavy cars/utes, or trucks. It doesn't take into considering the different sizes of other vehicles. I wouldn't for example expect a motorbike to pay the same RUC as a large Ford Ranger Ute, solely because the amount of wear and it's footprint on the roads is going to be less with a motorbike.

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#3400356 6-Aug-2025 14:32

On2or3wheels:

richms:

As usual the reddit crowd are all moaning about this because of the private sector being able to sell RUCs and oh no the poor people.

So what percentage are you happy to pay to these private companies as a processing fee?
"and oh no the poor people" That's ok, you're clearly rich so can subsidise them as they'll just drive without paying RUC's. You can also subsidise the boy-racers, some of who no doubt won't be paying.

NZTA raised this non-compliance as an issue when a RUC was 1st proposed for all vehicles.

I imagine there will be cameras and automated systems to catch anyone not paying, and then instant fines. I don't think the current system has any of this. I wonder if Australia is going to follow NZ.

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#3400358 6-Aug-2025 14:34

On2or3wheels:

Why are you currently subsidising Aqua drivers? They pay RUC's + petrol tax.

Because the RUC of a car using little petrol (5 litre per 100km) is a lot lower (50%) than the RUC on diesels and EVs?

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On2or3wheels

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#3400361 6-Aug-2025 14:39

Back in 2023 there were 604,000 vehicles without a current rego. What percentage will just drive without a RUC?
I'm sure the government won't accept a decrease in revenue compared to the current petrol tax, so the honest will just end up paying for all these people.

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rb99

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#3400362 6-Aug-2025 14:40

'I imagine there will be cameras and automated systems to catch anyone not paying, and then instant fines. I don't think the current system has any of this.'

So yet another reason to spy on everyone then.

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” -John Kenneth Galbraith

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On2or3wheels

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#3400364 6-Aug-2025 14:41

jarledb:

Because the RUC of a car using little petrol (5 litre per 100km) is a lot lower (50%) than the RUC on diesels and EVs?

I thought an Aqua is a hybrid & was paying RUC + the petrol tax?

richms

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#3400365 6-Aug-2025 14:42

On2or3wheels:

richms:

Probably a few % if the processes are automated, and I also expect that these processing companies will be buying the kilometers at a rate lower than waka kotahi will be retailing them for so the end result will be the same to the end user.

At least I will no longer be subsidizing the aqua drivers who are right lane camping or merging at 60ks onto the motorway.

Why are you currently subsidising Aqua drivers? They pay RUC's + petrol tax.

Because they take up about the same amount of space on the road, but at 4.5l/100km are paying half what I pay per km in an EV and 1/3-1/4 what I pay in the thirsty car despite not taking that fraction of the road. Their slow driving is reducing the contribution to the road tax by using less fuel when they should be paying more if they are using the roads for longer due to their extreme slowness.

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#3400366 6-Aug-2025 14:42

On2or3wheels:

I thought an Aqua is a hybrid & was paying RUC + the petrol tax?

They are not plug in so pay no RUC at this time.

Richard rich.ms

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