One would think that the savings in pollution (not only for the car itself, but the transport of the fuel, pollution from refineries, etc.) would offset any lost revenue from gas taxes.
What makes this really nonsensical is that many states still have electric vehicle rebates. They give you a rebate of a few thousand dollars to reward you for buying an electric vehicle but then charge you a few hundred dollars to punish you for buying an electric vehicle.
There are already taxes on tires, but they seem pretty nominal. I think you could hike them substantially (eg to $10 or $20 per tire) without upsetting too many people if you scrapped or reduced some other fee or abolished the necessity for a piece of paperwork.
Edit: as some pointe dout the real wear comes from trucks an dother big commercial vehicles. Tires are already taxed by vehicle weight class, but I'm proposing increasing the fees for that in order to simplify bureaucracy elsewhere.
They could be designed to last however many miles the state likes by putting more or less tread on them. And have a very obvious marker they are worn out so police can easily give tickets for people driving on worn out tyres.
Last time someone on HN discussed the Australia law I asked if Australia had a car ownership tax. It seems that they do, but that the money isn't enough to support road maintenance. Seems the easy answer to the new Australia law would be to increase the car ownership tax, lower the gasoline tax to match the increase, and then you don't need a special law for electric cars. No need to reinvent the wheel.
It’s the common erroneous argument of angry drivers against cyclists: get off my road, you’re not paying for it.
I like the idea of taxing tyres, as it explicitly taxes mileage and pollution. Would it create weird incentives? People running on tyres too long to avoid the tax? Reusing old, more polluting tyres?
Maybe we should just tax on mileage. In fact why not at the pump/charging station...
It's CERTAINLY a lot less than you'd be paying in gas tax if you used your car an average amount.
Taxes aren't punishment, anyway. Especially "road use taxes", which are, in this case, used to repair the roads you're driving on.
I don't think taxes should be too low and don't mind paying moderate amounts of tax, but I do think the number of taxes should be as low as possible to maintain legitimacy in the population. Nobody likes to feel nickel and dimed to death, so it's better to have a small number of predictable and easy to understand taxes than an endless variety of fees that add up to what feels disproportionately burdensome for the public. Policymakers need to remember that very few of the public are economic rationalists with pocket calculator brains.
So...when you go to a restaurant and eat, paying feels like a punishment?
When you go to an amusement park, paying the entry fee feels like a punishment?
When you pay for a plane ticket...a new appliance...a movie...?
No, the only reason that "taxes are a punishment (or theft)" is a meme _at all_ is that there are a bunch of entitled, privileged, well-off folks who have decided that they have theirs and they don't want to spend anything that will improve or support society.
I've gone through these arguments a few times, and ... yeah, the naivete on the other side is profound. You're right that I won't "win" an argument with someone who espouses that, or at least I won't convince them of anything, but that's due to them ignoring reality.
In this particular case? A usage fee, for cars, that supports roads, for cars? Seems pretty damned natural-consequences to me. You're paying to use something, not "being punished" in any way.
Found it: https://www.gao.gov/products/109954
A couple of caveats: it's from 1979 and deals with interstates only.
Whether roads are funded by road taxes or primary school fees doesn't matter - if we want to promote a behaviour we subsidize it; if we want to discourage it, we tax it.
Whether and how the books balance in the background isn't relevant.
It does, in social impact sense (gas taxes in the US are universally way too low to cover the impacts).
OTOH, diffuse social benefit doesn't pay for road maintenance, and states have legal and practical requirements for short-run operating budget balance. The right solution would probably be increase general taxation, in a way that misses the low end (e.g., bump income taxes, but not the lowest brackets), to cover the costs.
Most of the wear and tear on our roads come from trucks, not passenger cars.
A tesla model s weighs about as much as a ford f-150.
I have a Tesla in CA and am only familiar with the electric vehicle credit (not sure what it is, I haven't looked into it) and the "you get to use carpool lanes" rule for EVs.
Otherwise, I'm not familiar with extra taxes :(
But I think they do charge extra to make up for the fact that you never have to smog an electric vehicle.
Are they really idiots if that's the reality of the situation? It's gonna be a long time before EVs are in the beater car price brackets.
As I've already noted, the complaint is common across the political spectrum. From the Left, it's usually couched as a minority / inequality argument that such policies disadvantage poor minorities. From the right, it's more usually aimed at latte-sipping, college-educated, elitist liberals.
Whilst there's some truth to both portrayals, the underlying reality is that the common weal is served by developing (and trialing) alternative technologies and solutions, and building out necessary infrastructures. If there are inequities that arise out of them, then other taxation and spending parameters can be adjusted to achieve a net-neutral economic impact, or to offer / promote conservation and efficiency options which are better suited to minorities and/or the white / rural poor.
Note that the whole divide-and-conquer tactic is also very often supported at least in part by the interests directly harmed by such initiatives: traditional fossil-fuel powered automobiles, coal producers, and the like. Look beyond the engagement at the front to see what the generals are scheming and whom they're manipulating to their own advantage.
There are many layers to this. Rich people, people who own houses, have a better time with electric cars than poor people who rent apartments. Poor people also cannot afford to replace a car every decade. They shy away from tech such as batteries that have life expectancies less than a decade. Certainly few second or third-hand buyers want to purchase a battery pack with only a few years left in it. So the separation between gas an electrics isn't all about sticker price, but it is about money.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...
