Let me say in advance that I love the idea of everyone paying his "fair share", if such a thing were possible, and I apologize for ruffling any feathers, but there are some ideas in here which pop up whenever this topic is debated that must be addressed...
TonyWilliams said:
Anything that travels on public roads should pay the taxes to maintain those roads.
I'd say anyone who's a part of the public should pay for
public roads! We all benefit by having a strong public infrastructure so we all pay for it, regardless of how much we use it. Taxes in general are not "use fees" - otherwise all our roads would just be private pay-as-you-go toll roads. Do we pay for NASA in proportion with how much we use it? Do we pay for the military in proportion with how much we use it? Do we pay for social welfare in proportion to how we use it? Do we pay for health insurance in proportion with how much we use it? (ok that one - like our healthcare system - is a joke :lol: )
I'm sure they do pay a lot in fuel taxes, but it's still not an amount commensurate with the damage they cause, since the damage caused to roads is proportional to the 4th power of mass, while fuel consumption is approximately linearly related to mass. This is the reason the heavy vehicle use tax (HVUT) was enacted, which helps to correct this "injustice", although of course it doesn't suffice.
Currently, except for Washington state, EV's don't pay road taxes. They should [enact] a tax that is equal to the typically gasoline car of similar size, weight and impact to the roadways.
The gas tax is not a road tax. With the exception of tolls and things like the aforementioned HVUT (and the idiot WA state EV tax - don't get me started on that...), there's no such thing as a road tax. The gas tax is a gas tax is a
TAX ON GAS! And like all excise taxes, it has the effect of incentivizing reduced consumption of the item taxed (that's kinda the point.) If anyone thinks that a tax with naturally declining receipts over time (by design!) should be counted on for an expense that will naturally
increase over time, well you know the rest...
Which brings me to this fallacy:
miimura said:
michael said:
EV's get taxed plenty, just in a different manner than conventional cars.
Yes, they do get taxed plenty, but the money goes in a different pot than when you spend money to buy gas. The thread started on the basis of road maintenance. Very little of the "extra" sales tax we paid goes to road maintenance.
The idea of dedicated tax revenues is a sham. Money is fungible! Assigning this money to that pot and that money to this pot is just a shell game played by politicians to get the public to relent to the idea of taxing themselves. If a politician were to tell Joe Sixpack the truth - that the tax on gasoline is an excise tax that discourages and puts a small price on the negative externalities of its consumption - how long do you think he'd stay in office? Instead the gas tax is
branded as a "road tax" because your average voter can
feel good about "paying his fair share."
In fact, the allocation of gas tax revenues to road maintenance is purely artificial. Additional revenues have always been and will always be needed to maintain roads, and that money can come from
anywhere. Gas tax revenues could be dedicated to anything else or just go to the general fund like other taxes and the amount spent on roads would be exactly the same, since
road funding levels are ultimately set by an act of Congress (or some local analogue), not by gas tax receipts. Come to think of it, if gas tax revenues just went to the general fund like they should, I'd wager that you'd see
more money spent on roads, since instead of whining about how they need to come after those "tax dodging EVs" politicians would just find the money to get the job done, like they do for other items of vital importance!
So, anyway, Tadol's post did a pretty good job of getting to the heart of the matter: Our failing highway infrastructure has
nothing to do with EVs and everything to do with our elected representatives simply not doing their jobs. Tax policy is effective in shaping demand, but is NOT effective in allocating funding. Tax policy can work to discourage deleterious behaviors like burning gasoline and cigarettes and encourage beneficial behaviors like purchasing EVs and giving to charities, but the job of deciding where any and all of those tax dollars are spent is the purview of legislative bodies, not revenue collectors.
