Auto

Taxes, rules and the cost of driving. Owning a car has never been costlier—to buy, fuel, insure and maintain. The hidden expenses are enough to drive anyone crazy

XIt is a sticker shock that few see coming, one that eventually makes car-buyers discover the numbing heartbreak of auto-arithmetic. The tantalizing ex-showroom price that pushes you into dealerships seldom survives contact with reality. Once road tax, registration, insurance and cess raise their ugly head, price tags overshoot equations by 25-40 per cent. Suddenly, a car advertised for Rs 8.5 lakh lets you drive away only after you cough up Rs 11 lakh.

Taxes account for the lion’s share of this bloat: 18-per cent GST, cess ranging from 1 per cent for small cars to 22 per cent for premium variants. Bung in state-level roa

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