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.
