I don’t buy The Taiwan Government as a special case of bullying, that’s pretty much inherent to the nature of governments, and Taiwan’s at least has the virtue of innefficiency.
Private vehicle ownership has been a “golden short and curlies” extortion opportunity enthusiastically embraced by first National, then Local British governments, with road safety and environmental protection providing an increasingly shrivelled and unconvincing fig leaf.
Road Tax is a good example. Maybe 10-15 (? can’t remember) years ago declared British government policy was to abolish road tax and transfer the revenue generation to an increased fuel duty. Simple, logical, and environmentally sound (In particular, it avoids the “I’ve paid all this tax so I’d better use the bloody thing” syndrome), so of course it didn’t happen. Instead we have an increasingly complex system discrimminating between vehicles, and now specifically punitive retrospective taxes, at both local (“congestion charge” my arse) and national level, heavily penalising older vehicles.
I assume the auto trade lobby figured this was the best way to shift new tin, but they may have overdone it. Buying a new car was always a cast iron guarantee to lose money, but now its a speculation in the increasingly shaky automative futures market. Adding retrospective taxes isn’t going to build confidence. There’s more to fear than just fear itself, but it’ll do for a start.
