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And the correct activity to tax is the delivery itself, or some close proxy for it. Ideally taxed to the business doing the delivery so they have a harder time
by shantly 7y ago
And the correct activity to tax is the delivery itself, or some close proxy for it. Ideally taxed to the business doing the delivery so they have a harder time faking lower prices or otherwise making it seem like the higher costs are for any reason other than the way they're doing business.
While we're at it we could make trucking companies pay for the actual amount of wear they put on the roads and the costs to build truck-supporting infrastructure. And I'd like a pony.
- ptah 7y agogood point, the tax on a truck should be proportional to the wear and tear of that truck on the road
- cal97g 7y agoThat's the entire point of vehicle tax and fuel duty. The more you use the roads the more fuel you buy, the more fuel you buy the more tax you pay.
- dominotw 7y agoTrump adminstration is trying to increase tolling on trucking companies because they don't pay proportional to wear and tear.
- jf22 7y agoCare to share a source on this?
- dominotw 7y agohttps://www.overdriveonline.com/do-truckers-pay-enough-for-highways-white-house-suggests-not/ https://www.overdriveonline.com/do-truckers-pay-enough-for-h...
- jf22 7y agoI think it would more accurate to say a report by the Trump administration says truckers don't pay enough, but this article does not mention any steps by the administration to increase taxes on trucks. I'm not trying to argue a political point, but it would be interesting to see the current adminstration be for a tax increase.
- pif 7y ago> And the correct activity to tax is the delivery itself [...] Ideally taxed to the business doing the delivery Congratulations! You have discovered gas taxes ;-)
- ceejayoz 7y agoThose aren't going to be super useful as the shift to electric continues.
- oh_sigh 7y agoAlso, gas taxes don't account for different vehicle damage rates to roads. Gas taxes impose effectively a constant per pound-hour tax on road use, which is fine, but roads are damaged based on what is called the 4th power law, so 1000kg axel weight does 16x more damage than 500kg axel weight.
- ip26 7y agoThe pitfall is that gas taxes are apparently not strongly correlated to road wear. A gallon of gas in a passenger vehicle does dramatically less road damage than a gallon of gas in a delivery truck.
- fdswefsad 7y agoYou're right, but it's somewhat offset that a delivery truck uses more gas per mile than a passenger vehicle. Besides, we should discourage passenger vehicle use anyway, so raise the gas tax until it covers per mile delivery vehicle road wear.
- sharkmerry 7y agoNot offset enough. a hummer does 21x the wear/tear that an average car does. a 9ton big-rig does 410x the damage https://streets.mn/2016/07/07/chart-of-the-day-vehicle-weight-vs-road-damage-levels/ https://streets.mn/2016/07/07/chart-of-the-day-vehicle-weigh...
- 7y ago