Re: Good News for Rail Fuel taxes

["Bill MIller" <backtran@optusnet.com.au>]

After my original post I checked in the Australian Newspaper and (the
wording is a bit obtuse) it appears that rail's excise is set at zero as the
rail industry hoped. If this is so then rail will in fact not be paying the
road user charge they have been unfairly charged with over the years. I
certainly hope so since with the original proposal (rail and road paying the
same excise) some road insustry exec's were whipping themselves into a
frenzy over taking NR's traffic.

I sent an email to my local MP pointing out the stupidity of the original
proposal in terms of road carnage, fuel use, road damage etc etc and while I
am not naive enough to think this made a difference (he did not reply -
yet), it certainly helped get the frustration of the feds continually almost
ignore the obvious advantage of rail while seemingly pander to the RTF's
every whim, off my chest!


Derek Rogers wrote in message ...
>A major concern for the rail industry in the original GST proposal was that
>rail's
>efficiency relative to road would actually work against it if there were
>equal reductions in fuel excise for both transport modes in any tax
>reshuffle. Put simply, the benefit in terms of the
>cost structure of road transport (i.e. higher fuel use compared to rail)
>would be greater than for rail freight.
>Today's SMH newspaper says rail gets a full rebate on fuel excise worth
$319
>million over four years.
>Regards
>Derek Rogers
>