EU Taxes Elderly & Disabled Off Mobility Scooters
The European Union certainly can’t claim to be a benevolent supranational institution after this latest imposed tax - focusing as it is on the most vulnerable in society, no less.
“The popular mobility scooter, which has given many elderly and disabled people a new lease of life, has fallen prey to an EU-imposed tax…
Costing £2,500 on average and mostly imported from Taiwan and China, they are exempt from VAT for disabled purchasers and until recently, were also free of customs duty.
But now a decision by the European Union has led to import duty being slapped on each scooter brought into the UK and raised fears of a £250 price hike for disabled purchasers…
[T]he scooters - previously classified for customs purposes as a “carriage for disabled persons” - …now [to be] treated as “motor vehicles for the transport of persons”.” (The Telegraph)
To add extra taxes onto this sort of thing is the worst sort of imposed tax - one which will greatly adversely effect the most vulnerable in society, the elderly and the disabled. The people who need and use this sort of mobility scooter are often those who are also at the lower end of the economic scale, meaning that those are being taxed more are also those who usually have less money to start with.
Mobility scooters enable elderly people and disabled people to enjoy a far larger level of independence that they would otherwise enjoy, and enable them to have freedoms which would otherwise be denied them. To deny these people of this ability is indeed disgraceful.
The true measure of a society is found in how it treats its weakest and most vulnerable members. If that criteria is applied to the EU with this tax, then they certainly fall far short of the level that we do, and should, expect.
Source: The Telegraph
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These people are heartless. They don’t care though. When they are elderly they will be able to afford one.
It gets worse. The humble mobility scooter was previously classified for customs purposes as a “carriage for disabled persons”, but is now treated as a “motor vehicle for the transport of persons”.
Think logically about this. The next step will be that they aren’t allowed on the pavements, yet by law can only go at 8mph on the roads, so Traffic Chaos!
Also, they will have to be registered, taxed, require MOTs, and their elderly or disabled drivers will require insurance and a licence!
Although disabled since I was six, I’ve only needed one of these scooters for the last three years, and I would be housebound without it. A return taxi fare to town costs £7, but it’s only a matter of a few pence worth of electricity with my mobility scooter.
And what about the Green Issue?