The European Union certainly can't claim to be a benevolent supranational institution after this latest imposed tax - focusing as it is on the most vulnerable in society, no less.
"The popular mobility scooter, which has given many elderly and disabled people a new lease of life, has fallen prey to an EU-imposed tax...To add extra taxes onto this sort of thing is the worst sort of imposed tax - one which will greatly adversely effect the most vulnerable in society, the elderly and the disabled. The people who need and use this sort of mobility scooter are often those who are also at the lower end of the economic scale, meaning that those are being taxed more are also those who usually have less money to start with.
Costing £2,500 on average and mostly imported from Taiwan and China, they are exempt from VAT for disabled purchasers and until recently, were also free of customs duty.
But now a decision by the European Union has led to import duty being slapped on each scooter brought into the UK and raised fears of a £250 price hike for disabled purchasers...
[T]he scooters - previously classified for customs purposes as a "carriage for disabled persons" - ...now [to be] treated as "motor vehicles for the transport of persons"." (The Telegraph)
Mobility scooters enable elderly people and disabled people to enjoy a far larger level of independence that they would otherwise enjoy, and enable them to have freedoms which would otherwise be denied them. To deny these people of this ability is indeed disgraceful.
The true measure of a society is found in how it treats its weakest and most vulnerable members. If that criteria is applied to the EU with this tax, then they certainly fall far short of the level that we do, and should, expect.
Source: The Telegraph
