Toyota customers cough up Luxury Car Tax

Ordinary Toyota consumers have forked out more for Luxury Car Tax than the actual luxury and prestige buying elite.

The other half have paid less of the $5 billion in Luxury Car Tax raked in by the federal government since its introduction than buyers of the most common brand in the Australia carpark, CarAdvice reveals.

Toyota buyers emptied their bank accounts of $99.7 million over the LCT threshold of $66,331 in 2018, compared with Porsche buyers who flicked $97 million to the government along with the $81 million scraped off the top from BMW buyers.

Mercedes-Benz buyers were the biggest piggy bank for the federal government, shelling out $170 million in Luxury Car Tax in 2018.

Nearly 46,000 Toyota customers of some of the brand’s most popular vehicles, the Kluger, Prado and LandCruiser paid 33% on top of what would be a much more affordable retail price, compared with just 13,000 Mercedes-Benz customers.

Out of 282 vehicle models and variants available from Audi, BMW and Mercedes, 92 models are exempt from the 7.0L/100km LCT fuel economy threshold, which the aforementioned Toyotas, costing from $69,000-$79,000, are not.

Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries chief executive Tony Weber tells CarAdvice LCT is long overdue for scrapping.

“Luxury Car Tax has become redundant in the Australian automotive market and the time has come to cease the charade that this is a justifiable, sensible or even a necessary tax,” he says.

Toyota Australia says in a statement, “We believe LCT is an unfair impost on Australians and the automotive industry… Motorists already significantly contribute to government revenue when purchasing a vehicle through GST, stamp duty and registration fees.”