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Hitwise Intelligence - Heather Hopkins - UK
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Car Tax Strikes Nerve. UK Consumer Reaction to Budget 2007
March 27, 2007
Last week, Gordon Brown, presented what is thought to be his final budget. Whatever Gordon Brown wanted consumers to take away from his speech, it seems that the car tax hike is what really struck a nerve.
The following Search Term Suggestion report shows the keywords that UK consumers typed into search engines last week that included the keywords "budget 2007". Three of the top 20 search terms that included the keywords "budget 2007" related to the car tax. Of all of the policy provisions in the budget, car tax was the policy that drove most consumers to seek out more information.
The term "budget 2007 pensioners" likely refers to the extension of tax free allowances for pensioners. Perhaps searches for "budget 2007 stamp duty" was driven by disatisfaction over the lack of changes to the controversial stamp duty?
The next Search Term Suggestion report shows the queries that included the keyword "tax". Again, car tax figures prominently.
To give this some context - last week the share of all UK internet searches for "budget 2007" exceeded the share of searches for "paris hilton" by a factor of 6 and the share of searches for "car tax" exceeded the share of searches for "paris hilton" by a factor of 2. I guess I was wrong to call the budget a yawn!
Posted by Heather Hopkins at 06:12 AM
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Perhaps searches for car tax budget 2007 were the most popular because petrol car owners are wondering where the extra £10.00 tax came from. You see according to my reading of the budget, petrol car owners are told directly that their car tax will increase by £5.00 each year for the next three years.
So why are they being asked to pay an increase of £15.00 this year? If Mr Brown wants to bring tax paid on petrol cars in line with tax paid on diesel cars, then he should state DIRECTLY how that will be done, in other words he should come clean and tell motorists they are going to pay a one off £10.00 in order to align the VED.
Posted by Anonymous | May 29, 2007 09:01 AM