Clause 18 - Fee for payment of duty by credit card
Finance Bill
4:00 pm
Mr Andrew Tyrie (Chichester, Conservative)
We do not like the clause and we would much rather that it were not in the Bill. The intention of the clause is to enable payment of vehicle excise duty
by credit card. That sounds reasonable and sensible but the clause has many nasty little aspects. It gives the Treasury an open-ended power to levy the fee at any level. It could decide to set it at 1 per cent. this year, 2 per cent. next year and 3 per cent. the following year. The fee could be constructed in the form of a surrogate tax. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for South Derbyshire (Mr. Todd) is querying what I am saying.