Mobility Scooters And Golf Carts Taxed By EU

AH, those Europeans, with their foreign ways and meddling little foreign hands. Now they have meddled with that practical if not fashionable form of transport, the mobility scooter.

The scooter, which has given many an elderly or disabled person a new lease of life, has been targeted by EU bean counters, who have decided to slap import duty on the vehicles, most of which are imported from Taiwan and China.

Until now, the scooters have been exempt from VAT for disabled users as well as being free of customs duty. But the introduction of an import duty has raised fears of a £250 price hike on the scooters, which currently cost around £2,500 each.

Ray Hodgkinson of the British Healthcare Trades Association is unimpressed by the ruling which he says treats the scooters as – get this - “go-karts”, albeit appalling slow ones. Hodgkinson also warns that the tax could end up bankrupting a number of companies.

The tax apparently comes on the back of suspicions that the scooters were being used as golf buggies.

Last one to the first green’s an arthritic old cripple…

Anorak

Posted: 12th, June 2007 | In: Money Comments (2) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink