Electric Cars – fuel duty and road tax: how to replace £35B annual revenue (opens in new tab)

Indeed, here in the states, cyclists pay for the roads that we use. For instance most local roads in cities and counties are paid for with property taxes. Income taxes cover a fair amount of road construction. The county bike paths have a fee. We're not allowed to ride on the Interstates, and we tend to avoid "big" roads for safety / comfort reasons.

My hunch is that if one were to look closely at the funding of roads, one would find that they represent a net subsidy for heavy trucking.

But I could be wrong. It would be interesting to hear if heavy bike/pedestrian roads have higher road maintenance than those that are used lightly. My guess would be that the major wear and tear comes from nature, water in particular, which mean wear and tear isn't based on usage.

When it come to tire pollution those would be better taxed on the tires themselves. Bike tires tend to be much much smaller than cars so the taxation wouldn't be that big of a deal to cyclists.

Vehicle Excise Duty since 1920 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_Excise_Duty

Road funding in the UK is just from the general pot of tax money.

There are a lot of anti-cyclist types in the UK that always incorrectly (or ironically, correctly) claim that cyclists don't pay road tax (no one does) and therefore shouldn't use the road, even though just about every cyclist is an adult that pays UK tax.

I certainly expect the UK, and every other country to tax EVs by mileage within a decade, and additionally toll charge on major routes, almost certainly via cameras (to also fine you for speeding), or require all cars to have a GPS blackbox (which let's face it, isn't expensive now).

Registration goes toward running the registration apparatus, not into infrastructure. That's another misconception. The other contribution is from fuel sales taxes/excises, and that goes into general tax revenue as well, so is not explicitly set aside for road projects. Negating the potential income from fuel sales taxes, is all the fossil fuel subsidies, what once was 15bil income, after subsidies of 12bil, is now just 3billion in income from fuel taxes. So the money comes in from the consumer, and goes straight out to the fossil fuel industry through industry fuel tax credits. Absolutely bullshit, but it also means there's not much left of that fuel tax income to pay for infrastructure.

https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Depart....

Ultimately a cyclist will pay the same amount of tax, minus the fuel taxes, and get just a scrap of that tax spent back on cycling.

The other area they are losing out not mentioned in the article is Benefit in Kind tax for EVs used as company cars. At some point, that will also need to end and be more in alignment with ICE vehicles.

Maybe in Norway, and only Norway. Every other nation should be quadrupling-down on EV incentives. Or 10 fold. Or 20.

Local roads are funded by council tax, so this probably dispells the anti-cycling argument because presumably the cyclists do pay council tax (unless they're on motorways which is another issue.)

It's depending on emissions at the moment as a way to encourage vehicles with low/no emissions but there is no reason for EV to keep being exempt.

The issue in term of tax revenue is fuel duty and VAT on fuel. I'm suspecting that once transition is advanced enough they'll find ways to add tax on charging points/electricity used for charging, or an actual road tax on mileage or whatnot.

In short, it is misinformation.

Citation needed.

What does owning a car have to do with it? If you own two cars, or a car and a scooter, you still have to pay taxes for both to be on the road, don’t you?

EDIT: I forgot to mention, where I live taxes aren’t collected as a “fee for polluting.” They’re to keep roads maintained and improve them. This often includes special bike lanes that bicyclists do nothing to pay for.

It is not what you call it, but what you spend it on.

It's really more that many cyclists are in the way and aren't going the speed limit. You end up holding up a lot of traffic that is forced to go slower and that's annoying to everyone. to be frank, when you're driving a car a person on a bike taking up the entire road is annoying. This is why people really dislike bikes - they get in the way of people trying to get somewhere.

I find it so strange that roads aren't viewed as a public service, and instead should be taxed (regressively) to cover the cost of the road by those using it.

I'm fine paying fully for my own road use, as long as I can stop paying for all the government services I don't use. But as long as the government is taking half of my paycheck, providing me with roads is the bare minimum they could give in return.

It would also be beneficial to incentivize better vehicle choices at the point of sale. Ebikes should be subsidized to the point of being free or nearly so. Other evehicles should be taxed extremely high per pound of mass. A family of four should therefore naturally gravitate toward a compact hatchback over a massive SUV that weighs twice as much like they do today when there is no incentive for getting a smaller vehicle.

Everyone else just accepts that what the system lacks in accounting for private road use, is made up for in simplicity and cheapness of administration.

For example, overtaking a cyclist regardless of the fact that you are already approaching a stop junction should result in a fine of at least £10,000.

Tailgating in a dangerous and aggressive manner, £50,000.

From everyday observation, this would raise a few billion in no time at all and price some very stupid and aggressive people off the roads entirely.

Count the heavy vehicles: https://twitter.com/urbanthoughts11/status/11912952051876864...

Don't get me wrong, the tax system is setup as a massive subsidy to trucking on roads that should be eliminated so this stuff can move onto trains where it belongs for everything but the last mile, but a big part of the cost is also just the space and area consumed by it all.

The shipping industry doesn't want to pay that tax, which is why they're lobbying to pass the tax onto the rest of us.

Privatize profits, socialize costs.

Additionally, despite a lot of people saying they want to use taxes to "handle externalities" or some other sort of "pay per usage" type manner like that what they actually want is to tax people who are on the fence between bus pass and used cheap car solidly into the bus pass camp and taxing for road wear would not accomplish that.

Additionally, when it comes to all forms of public infrastructure there's a common good argument to be made for a tax that's effectively very flat. The whole point of government funded things is that we all kick in a little and then all can use the resulting things as much or little as we want and that this low cost per use has societal benefits.

Edit:

For these kinds of activism driven discussions it's generally accepted that road wear is correlated to weight ^4

cyclist -> 100 ^4

(very) compact car -> 1000 ^4

electric hummer -> 5000 ^4

medium duty commercial truck -> 10000^4

Pick what you think is a reasonable bill for any one of those and then compute what the resulting bill for the others would be. Even if you want to do variable rate monkey business you're gonna have a hell of a time overcoming the whole "^4" bit.

The downside is that it would penalize soft rubber as well as the usage of winter tires.

Now most people only replace them at the milage limit like their oil because they run out their miles faster but for some people (like me) I tend to replace things on time more often because I do not drive that much

EVs tend to be heavier, so they'd pay more on average.

OTOH, fuel transport trucks are very heavy and fully taxing based on the square of fully loaded weight would increase transport costs significantly. This would end up getting passed on to ICE vehicle users.

This solution works, IMO.

That's the crazy thing about vehicle excise duty, if you do 1,500 miles a year you might use 300 litres of petrol (about £150 tax), but you could be paying another £160 in VED, making the total tax 20p per mile

Meanwhile someone doing 30,000 miles at the same mpg will be paying about 10p per mile

To meet our goals we need to be doing the opposite, which is making private automobile use of the roads more expensive while creating more and better alternative transportation opportunities (ie. public transit, cycling).

Additionally if we shifted to other taxes, then this is a transfer of costs from relatively wealthy car owners to the relatively poorer who don't even own cars.

Edit: of course it neglects that not all roads are created equal, some have a much higher cost and value per passenger-mile (e.g. bridges)

This is not in any way offset by the fact that whatever that money is spent on is subject to VAT, causes wages to be paid that are subject to PAYE, and so on, even though it sems like it would eventually cause all the money to end up in the government's pockets anyway. The VAT when that money is initially spent is included in the £35 billion figure, and any taxes after the money is spent are irrelevant since the money had already become actual, final consumer spending involving actual consumption of goods and services.

This is a much more useful way to think about taxation and the need for tax. By your logic, the actual tax levels don't matter - 100% of money will end up in the government's pockets eventually after all.

Please explain this. Are you suggesting governments can just stop taxing, and print the money to pay their debts with no ill consequences?

I kind of understand your argument, but net-income in my pocket that's not spent on petrol will be spent on some sort of goods or services that has VAT on it, which is 20%. So, yes, I might spend more on goods and services, which might mean more computer shops, clothes shops or restaurants and take aways, and they in turn might grow the economy a bit, but would that convince the government to _not_ reintroduce some kind of road charging?

Soo much wrong here...

Revenue should be the ONLY purpose of taxation, and falsehood that sovereign government steams from a combination of fiat currency and MMT, which when combined and executed on like you are implying lead to inflation can currency collapse (in the extreme)

governments SHOULD NOT use taxation to pick winners and losers, nor to legislate morality, they should use taxation ONLY to collect revenue to projects and programs approved by the people, and for no other purpose

There's no excess when you account for the effects on climate. At some point, we'll have to pay to mitigate the impact of fossil-based transportation, and any operators in the industry (from oil extraction to road constructions) will be bankrupt unless we keep externalizing/socializing the costs and pretend climate change is not caused by CO2 emissions.

How much does it spend on secondary things? At least in Norway, I think the number is that even for a normal ICE vehicle and all it's costs, you're still not paying what the government actually spends in total. With something like $1000 per car or so.

Mostly because of secondary effects. Higher hospital costs vs what would have happened investing that money on public transport, walkable cities etc. Street parking is basically free compared to what that land is worth. Cost of accidents. Etc. etc.

Then, we can rethink the whole system and realize road-based transportation with private cars is not sustainable. And then, we can forget about fuel duty / energy tax because we have whole societies to redesign :)

On the other hand most of us would like (for example) a functioning NHS. That needs good people, good facilities, and the tax revenues to pay for both. There is a real and imminent danger that our whole public health system could collapse due to a mass exodus of skilled professionals who decide they've had enough. Arguably some parts of it already have.

Behind the headlines about Ukraine and COVID and Brexit and so on are numerous mostly overlooked yet very significant problems within our society and economy. Many of those problems are only going to get worse and by extension more expensive to eventually fix if they aren't dealt with soon enough.

If we're going to prevent those things from happening in the next few years then a lot of us are going to have to pay for it (whoever is leading the government for the next two years or after the next general election). Hopefully the less well-off who are already struggling will be looked after and the burden will fall on the better-off demographics. Of course most people don't want to pay more tax but I suspect many of those who could afford to do so without suffering too much would prefer that to the alternative of literally watching a family member die because there was no ambulance available when they called 999 in a medical emergency!

What should they cut? Every department will tell you they're underfunded.

At the end of the day any implementation of the methods discussed lead to absolute tyranny.

To track per-mile-tax you’re going to have either government gps tracking in real-time or cameras tracking your ever my movement. Alternatively, the government will track and then likely limit power consumption for your cars.

This is the exact opposite of any free market. Effectively, you’re giving total control to the government around what movement you can make and/or you’ll have zero anonymity by law.

This way, we can spend the revenues from road taxes to build and maintain our infrastructure, and the realize that the latter will just make the whole car industry bankrupt overnight.