27th August 2009
You don't read much about the Red Diesel issue since the self certification arrangement came into force last Autumn, but I am not sure that silence really is golden.
In recent months I have been out and about on the system, filling up with diesel from a number of suppliers and have been surprised by the diversity of propulsion / heating and generation declarations recorded on the vendors sales sheets. I recently purchased diesel form one very well known and high profile boatyard and was amazed to see that of the 20 names on the list, 19 had declared 0% propulsion!
Now we all know that the Government didn't really want to implement this European driven change, and were all relieved that the self declaration process introduced a measure of sanity into the situation, but now I am concerned.
If the self declarations I have seen are typical, I think that the boating community could stand accused of not playing the game. And if we can't be trusted to take a reasonable approach self declaration, the option may be removed and we will all end up paying full duty on all our diesel.
I fear that this may be a classic case of having an elephant in the house - we all know that there is an issue, but no one wants to talk about it.
We should all take care in our declarations as this is probably a case of "if you abuse it you lose it".
You don't read much about the Red Diesel issue since the self certification arrangement came into force last Autumn, but I am not sure that silence really is golden.
In recent months I have been out and about on the system, filling up with diesel from a number of suppliers and have been surprised by the diversity of propulsion / heating and generation declarations recorded on the vendors sales sheets. I recently purchased diesel form one very well known and high profile boatyard and was amazed to see that of the 20 names on the list, 19 had declared 0% propulsion!
Now we all know that the Government didn't really want to implement this European driven change, and were all relieved that the self declaration process introduced a measure of sanity into the situation, but now I am concerned.
If the self declarations I have seen are typical, I think that the boating community could stand accused of not playing the game. And if we can't be trusted to take a reasonable approach self declaration, the option may be removed and we will all end up paying full duty on all our diesel.
I fear that this may be a classic case of having an elephant in the house - we all know that there is an issue, but no one wants to talk about it.
We should all take care in our declarations as this is probably a case of "if you abuse it you lose it".
I vary my declaration depending on time of the year. Winter I dn't move and stay in the marina and declare 100% heating, Easter time I may declare 40-60% heating then in the summer 80-20% I haven't yet declared 100% propulsion though.
ReplyDelete