Proposal 4: Changes to fees for RUC administration

Consultation is now closed, and we thank you for your feedback.  Any changes to our fees and charges to pay for better regulation will be implemented on or before October 2023. 

For updates, see http://www.nzta.govt.nz/funding-and-fees(external link)

Summary of Proposal 4

Most drivers using New Zealand’s roads contribute towards their upkeep. Some pay in the prices of their fuel. Others, like drivers of light diesel vehicles and heavy vehicles like trucks, pay through road user charges (RUC). Waka Kotahi and its agents collect RUC. 

The money collected from RUC largely goes to the National Land Transport Fund (NLTF) which funds a range of land transport investments, including road improvements and maintenance, public transport, and road safety.  It also goes to other regulatory functions and revenue management.  

We currently process around 3.7 million road user charges (RUC) transactions annually.

To make sure the system works properly, we also facilitate accurate RUC recording by processing applications to change distance recorders and hubodometers, setting up purchasing facilities, processing RUC distance licence and additional applications, applications to amend RUC vehicle types, and processing exemption applications etc.

Why are we proposing these changes?

The current fees and charges are based on rates set in 2013/14 and don’t reflect the current cost to regulate and provide RUC and eRUC services today.  Until the changes are made, the administration costs of RUC and eRUC transactions will keep being subsidised by driver and motor vehicle licence fees. That’s not fair.

We’re proposing to introduce new fees for services we’ve previously provided for free because we didn’t have a way to recover those costs when the services were set up.

We’re increasing fees where the cost of providing the service is greater than the fee paid for it, and decreasing fees where the cost of providing the service is less than the fee paid for it.

We want to make sure we accurately recover the costs of providing regulatory services.

How and when would changes take place?

Changes to give effect to the above proposals would be through amending or replacing the Road User Charges (Administration Fees) Regulations 2014, or new regulations, with effect on or before October 2023.

Tables – Fees affected by Proposal 4

There are 19 fees in this section. They are summarised in the table below.

What is the proposed change?

How many changes are there?

What fees are subject to this change?

New fee

8

Table 9

Fee goes up

7

Table 10

Fee goes down

3

Table 11

Fee recovered through another fee

1

Table 12

Total number of changes

19

Proposed fees in the following tables assume that additional government funding is secured through the use of section 9(1A) of the Land Transport Management Act 2003 (outlined in Proposal 1). You will notice a column showing the estimated impact if s9(1A) is unsuccessful.

Table 9: Proposed new fees relating to RUC administration (GST inclusive)

Table 10: Proposed fees relating to RUC administration that go up (GST inclusive)

Table 11: Proposed fees relating to RUC administration that go down (GST inclusive)

Table 12: Proposed fee that will be recovered by another fee