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I understand the viewpoint that less cars = better cities. But worse cars? Because this heavily penalizes buying better cars. I understand the need to segment t

• ucaetano 9y ago
  > you pay flat €50k in taxes if your car costs more than €50k. That would be the same as capping income tax: you pay a 20% rate up to $100k of taxes, after that, no incremental taxes. It's the opposite of progressive, actually taxing rich people less than poor people. I'd even go and propose that cars over €50k should be taxed at a higher marginal tax rate than lower-priced cars.
  • ansgri 9y ago
    Well, to extract welfare funding from rich people you already have income taxes (maybe even progressive), why exactly does one want to encourage a low-quality lifestyle?
    • ucaetano 9y ago
      Because expensive cars are luxury goods with negative externalities.
      • khedoros1 9y ago
        Which externalities does an expensive car have that a cheap one doesn't?
        • ucaetano 9y ago
          Larger size, larger engine, more natural resources required (and more pollution). Also, not only you need to account for the negative externalities, but you also need to provide a disincentive for purchase, which then needs to be progressive due to the decreasing marginal personal utility.
          • khedoros1 9y ago
            Those aren't aspects of just luxury cars...and they're aspects that I covered in my previous post. > but you also need to provide a disincentive for purchase You need to pay for the externalities. Beyond that, I disagree that you need to disincentivize the purchase.
  • ars 9y ago
    There's a difference between taxing income and taxing spending. They are opposites, so the tax rate should also be opposite - the higher the spending the lower the tax. After all, you want to encourage wealthy people to spend and spread the wealth, not encourage them to hoard it.
    • ucaetano 9y ago
      > you want to encourage wealthy people to spend Not on cars.
      • ars 9y ago
        Why not? In what way is a cheaper car socially better than an expensive car?
        • ucaetano 9y ago
          You don't want cars overall to start with. And as wealth increases, the negative utility of a 1% increase in price of a certain good decreases for that buyer, requiring higher taxes to have the same disincentive than for lower income buyers. Also, cars (especially luxury ones) are highly unproductive assets.
          • ars 9y ago
            > You don't want cars overall to start with. So you punish those who have/want one? Ouch, I wouldn't want to live in your world. Work the other side, make people want to not have one. Making people's life miserable is not a good way to manage your citizens. > And as wealth increases ... lower income buyers. Except that the wealthy person just buys a cheaper car. They still have a car, and you have not accomplished your goal. Your mistake is you taxed spending, without even checking income. Your scheme does not make people not get a car, it causes people to get a cheaper car, that's all.
            • ucaetano 9y ago
• Tehnix 9y ago
  > more expensive cars have more advenced automation and safety features, so their use should be encouraged That would indeed be the long term play, but as most democratically elected governments, they have a 4 year window in which they don't want to be known as "The guys that cut away a ton of welfare, so people could get cheaper cars", since the immediate effect would be a loss of money. Unless of course, people started buying more new cars, but that is speculative, and a gamble that not many of the bigger parties seem willing to make :(
• martinmunk 9y ago
  I like cars and make quite a decent salary, and I still drive a 17 year old Peugeot with 330k miles simply because I am not willing to pay the tax on the kind of car I actually want.
• qiqing 9y ago
  The tax rate of cars in China is similar, and it results in fewer cars, and more people taking public transit. Note: this is also because there is very advanced public transit that can handle high throughput, and only the super-wealthy buy cars, in part to show off.
• Reason077 9y ago
  Well, compare to the UK. Here we have low taxes on cars and are often incentivised to purchase new ones. This supports car manufacturing, which is a very significant industry for the UK, employing more than 800,000 people. New cars (dieselgate aside) are generally better for the environment too. But aside from occasional temporary scrapage schemes, there isn't really much incentive to get rid of old ones. This not only results in congested roads but also towns and city streets that are cluttered with parked and often rarely-used vehicles occupying every available space and greatly reducing the "public realm" that could be used for other, healthier and more productive purposes. So while Denmark's high taxes on new vehicles may not produce the best outcomes for the quality of the vehicle fleet, it does seem to have been effective at reducing the total number of vehicles. Perhaps, like in Japan, annual registration fees/taxes should start increasing after the vehicle is a certain number of years old, making it expensive to retain ownership of old vehicles.