Unjustified registration tax on racing cars

The Finance Minister is planning on introducing a 6.5 per cent registration tax on "New or used racing cars, go-karts, quad bikes and motorcycles not suitable to be used on the road".

How the minister justifies this is beyond me; a tax is a compulsory payment, in return for an essential service, (you pay NI to receive a pension, road tax is supposedly there to maintain our roads, etc.) what does the minister propose to offer in return for this useless (in terms of possible revenue generated as only a handful are imported every year) tax? Should he propose to build a race circuit, or resurface the Imtaħleb hill climb route it might be justified, but I am certain that all the minister is trying to do is squeeze the last couple of drops out of the already dry rag that is our economy.

How this tax is to be administered is unclear. Will it be based on invoice value, or is one expected to rely on an often unfair and inflated valuation computed by some obscure formula made up by the authorities, as is done for road-going vehicles?

Whoever came up with this idea obviously has no clue whatsoever about motorsports. Race cars aren't easy to value as is done with road cars as these are often put together over a few seasons, constantly developed and modified. Another factor that has not been taken into consideration is that a good many race cars are home- built over weekends by father and son teams out of lengths of steel hollow section and cobbled together with bargain parts bought off eBay. These often prove to be extremely competitive and cheap to build. Will these cars be taxed too? If so, who could possibly value such an item?

The ADT's Mission Statement on its own website declares:

"... the travelling needs of people and the transport requirements for the movement of goods within..."

Race cars and go karts are not transport, they are not licensed and they are not used on public roads therefore do not fall under its remit. They are kept in garages, trailered to race venues used for not more than a few minutes at a time and trailered back. The average hill climb car is used for 20 minutes a year in total and the government does not provide any support whatsoever, be it venues, incentives or even subsidies for teams who travel to Europe to compete under the nation's flag out of their own pocket, often winning multiple podium places.

Maltese motorsports, be it drag racing in Santa Pod, circuit racing in Racalmuto or the iconic Mt Etna hill climb, has always been a success story. Let us not kill the genre of sport that the country as a whole excels in, simply because it is deemed a soft target.

Let us not hinder our local motorsport aficionados from imparting their accumulated knowledge to the next generation, by making motorsport inaccessible to the grass roots.