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I'm not really sure there's a good answer here. Fuel tax is 43 cents a litre. Australian cars right now avg about 13.1 litres per 100km. So you're looking at

I'm not really sure there's a good answer here. Fuel tax is 43 cents a litre. Australian cars right now avg about 13.1 litres per 100km. So you're looking at ~$5.6 per 100km for fuel tax. This tax is adding $2.5 tax per 100km for electric. Right now, EVs are absolutely creating an regressive tax situation with regards to fuel. Those who can afford to buy newer, efficient cars can usually save money on tax over those who can't. For electric, it was worse - because they do tend to be more expensive to purchase up front, and they paid no fuel tax at all. And frankly, infrastructure is expensive, and governments need to plan on continuing to maintain it. That said - I think the only real answer here is a more thorough overhaul of how you tax road usage. Perhaps it's time to ditch the fuel excise tax entirely, and tax all drivers based on (vehicle weight * kms driven * some constant). Encourage drivers to move to lighter vehicles which cause less wear and tear on the road, and drop the disparity between fuel and electric. They both use the same tires.

Wowfunhappy 6y ago
> Encourage drivers to move to lighter vehicles which cause less wear and tear on the road, and drop the disparity between fuel and electric. They both use the same tires. And what of the damage that non-electric vehicles do to the environment? Shouldn't we be accounting for that? At least roads can be easily repaired.
kanox 6y ago
> Right now, EVs are absolutely creating an regressive tax situation with regards to fuel. Those who can afford to buy newer, efficient cars can usually save money on tax over those who can't. For electric, it was worse - because they do tend to be more expensive to purchase up front, and they paid no fuel tax at all. Encouraging the adoption of cleaner but more expensive technology is always going to be regressive, no way around this. A lot of environmental regulation has strong regressive effects, it hits coal miners much harder than people sipping 10$ coffee on their macbook.
- kilotaras 6y ago
  I'm of mind that all government "monetary disincentives", e.g. fines, sin taxes, pollution taxes should go into fee and dividend scheme. Solves both moral hazard (we want more fines/driving because we need revenue) and regressive nature of those.
  - Gibbon1 6y ago
    I thought of that for a long time. Finally decided that fines should be handed over the Social Security Admin and booked against the offenders account.
JTbane 6y ago
Or just increase the gas and diesel taxes, which has a win-win of encouraging EV adoption and cutting down on CO2 emissions.
brokenmachine 6y ago
>tax all drivers based on (vehicle weight x kms driven x some constant). But what about my mates who own the trucking companies? Are you implying they should pay their fair share?
CryptoPunk 6y ago
>>That said - I think the only real answer here is a more thorough overhaul of how you tax road usage. Perhaps it's time to ditch the fuel excise tax entirely, and tax all drivers based on (vehicle weight * kms driven * some constant). Also congestion. Charging based on how much congestion is on a roadway while a car uses it will reduce traffic during peak times and increase how much economic value the road transportation network contributes by making the most valuable use-cases get priority access to roads during peak demand periods, while spreading out driving across a larger range of hours to reduce overall delays to traffic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congestion_pricing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congestion_pricing Traffic is basically due to a scarce economic resource - road space during peak times - having no pricing to prioritize its use. People thereby pay for road space during rush hour by paying in time stuck in traffic, which is a very inefficient economic mechanism for determining the allocation of scarce resources.
seanmcdirmid 6y ago
Taxing by weight will put EVs at a disadvantage given batteries are heavy compared to fully loaded fuel tanks.
qqn 6y ago
"The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. "Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. "But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet." Terry Pratchett, https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/72745-the-reason-that-the-rich-were-so-rich-vimes-reasoned https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/72745-the-reason-that-the-r...
yaacov 6y ago
> The EV industry accepts that a road user charge is inevitable as the car fleets transition to electric, but argue it should be introduced fairly and evenly. It points out the petrol excise goes into general revenue rather than road funding, and EV owners pay more tax than petrol car owners due to higher taxes from GST, stamp duty, and luxury car tax. I think it's ok for one particular tax to be regressive if the general taxation scheme is not.
- horsawlarway 6y ago
  I'm not really sure I agree the general taxation scheme is not regressive still. It varies, but at least for ACT, they waive stamp tax on new electric cars, and registration is $100 cheaper. I also didn't include GST tax for fuel in my numbers above (10% of total fuel cost). So yes, luxury tax does kick in at a lower number (which I find silly), but I think overall, you're still creating a situation where electric is paying less to use the same roads. That said - Agree with the line you quoted. I think an even and fair tax makes sense, but I don't see how you do that at the local level when the fuel tax is federal.
donaltroddyn 6y ago
How do you track the number of Kms driven? Is it possible to do so while maintaining the privacy of individuals?
- Too 6y ago
  It's more difficult than that: How do you track the number of Kms driven on public roads. As claimed purpose of tax was to cover the wear on these.
- singhrac 6y ago
  Every car has an odometer... one could think of a relatively convenient scheme where you can get your car inspected once a year at any refueling station, and tampering with the odometer is a crime. Won't stop everyone, but does it matter?
  - donaltroddyn 6y ago
    I don't think Odometers are reliable enough, especially as the basis for a tax. You'd certainly see an increase in average tyre size!
    - adrianN 6y ago
      They're probably accurate to within less than 10%. How many kilometers would you have to drive to save a dollar from slightly bigger tyres?
      - donaltroddyn 6y ago
        I was being slightly facetious in referencing tyre size, although people regularly have to adjust speedo/odometers by 10% or more when fitting large tyres on off-roaders. Odometers can have their values changed at will, at least in ICE vehicles, often for valid reasons.
        jdashg 6y ago
somesortofsystm 6y ago
I dunno, I think this is a pretty draconian imposition by a state known for its decadence in a country that used to like to think it was a leader in building new infrastructure in tough conditions. With all the energy resources at Australians' disposal, it sure seems off-kilter to not be rewarding those who chose to go more efficient. Would that there were Australias own local industry capable of competing with Tesla .. and I say that as a once-proud Australian. With a local industry leading the way, as usual, the Australian government could get a clue.
- lopmotr 6y ago
  They will be rewarded. It's half the tax of petrol vehicles and the fuels is also much cheaper on top of that.
  - somesortofsystm 6y ago
    The point is, Australia could move off fossil fuels quicker than most other countries, and has one of the biggest motivators for doing so - its environment. However, the will of the people is not there. Or at least, the technology to disrupt Australia's coal and oil junkies, isn't there.
coryrc 6y ago
The vast majority of road damage is done by heavy trucks. Don't need to tax these cars at all.
- horsawlarway 6y ago
  I think there's a lot of truth in that. That why I was so specific about including weight as a factor.
- bnt 6y ago
  But you still need to maintain existing and build new roads, and not only trucks drive on the road. What about snow? It needs to be removed for normal cars as well as trucks.
  - tshaddox 6y ago
    Snow removal is probably different, but the point is that road maintenance due to regular road wear would be significantly (perhaps at least an order of magnitude) less if there were only passenger cars on the road.
  - adrianN 6y ago
    It also needs to be removed for bicycles and pedestrians, who don't pay special taxes for that.
    - bnt 6y ago
      But bicycles don’t cause air pollution nor do they damage the roads. So you got me puzzled why they should be taxes. Pedestrians are taxed too much anyway
      - adrianN 6y ago
        I was making an argument against taxing EVs. Or I tried to.
  - coryrc 6y ago
recursive 6y ago
I read somewhere that road damage caused by vehicles is not linear with weight. Heavy vehicles do much more damage. I can't cite a source, but I recall an exponent between 3 and 4 on the leading term. With that in mind, everything but heavy freight is basically negligible. And then it's generally for businesses where privacy isn't so much of an issue.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  You can also sidestep the privacy issue there, because large electric vehicles are likely to need special chargers. (How many kW do you need to charge a 1MWh battery in a reasonable amount of time?) And then you can levy road tax on large trucks per kWh at the charging point in the traditional way without even having to track everywhere they go.
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    How much privacy concern is there to have your odometer reading recorded annually in places that already do safety inspections? I mean, I've driven an average of 3400 miles per year on my car. Violate my privacy as much as you like with that data.
    - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
      There have been proposals to track the location of trucks at all times, presumably so that a truck that drives all over the country is paying road fees in the states where it's actually driving instead of to whatever other state it's registered in (which would presumably be the one with the lowest fees). Levying the fees at the charging point replicates the existing (imperfect but pretty good) model with fuel tax because you at least have to charge somewhere that you're actually driving that day, without the privacy implications of tracking the vehicle at all times.
- fuoqi 6y ago
  This was one of the argued motivation for introducing the Platon system in Russia in addition to the fuel tax. It's an electronic toll system mandatory for trucks over 12 tons and costs every such truck ~5 USD cents per traveled km. Unfortunately it does not take into account current mass of a truck (probably because it's much harder to control and easier to cheat). Part of the proceedings goes to a federal fund for road maintenance, another one to the company (partially owned by an oligarch close to Putin) which has developed the system and currently maintenance it. This concession will work until 2027.
davidivadavid 6y ago
As a European, 13.1 l/100 km seems... insane. What's happening here?
- alkonaut 6y ago
  Has to be including heavy vehicles? Australians still by V8’s but not that many of them can be...
  - dmurray 6y ago
    It is including heavy vehicles, but also motorcycles. The average for "passenger vehicles" is still about 10.5 l/km. Just bigger cars I think. https://www.budgetdirect.com.au/car-insurance/research/average-fuel-consumption-australia.html https://www.budgetdirect.com.au/car-insurance/research/avera...
    - Baeocystin 6y ago
      Motorcycles, perhaps surprisingly, aren't all that much more efficient than regular gas cars. The tl;dr is that their aerodynamics are terrible, and their engines not tuned for fuel efficiency.
      - jholman 6y ago
        Hmn. Brief research seems to show that you're more correct than I would have expected, but also that it's less true than I think you imply. For example, https://afdc.energy.gov/data/10310 https://afdc.energy.gov/data/10310 gives motorcycles as almost 2x as efficient as cars, almost 3x as efficient as "light truck / van". Given that enormous amount of metal that's not being hauled around, I would have expected a bigger difference. Nonetheless, for single-occupant travel, halving transportation carbon footprint would be quite a great thing.
        Baeocystin 6y ago
        >Before any new car hits the showroom, the EPA runs an emissions evaluation and calculates a “CO2 equivalent” – a single number that represents GHGs CO2, NO X , HC, and CO. The CO2 equivalent units are in grams/mile, so a higher number means more GHGs and more climate damage. For a 2WD 2020 Ram 1500 HFE on the highway, that number is 340 g/mile. Unfortunately, motorcycle emissions data isn’t documented by the EPA. This is a real issue, because if the problem isn’t measured you don’t know what to fix. >There are a few independent studies that shed light on the issue, however. One published in 2008 by Swiss researchers took real data from several motorbikes including a BMW R1150GS. The GS highway CO2 equivalent is a stunning 380 g/mile (17% worse than the Dodge)! They found that a 1993 Honda Shadow VX600 with only 583 ccs spews a whopping 408 g/mile. That is twice as much as a new Honda Civic! >Other studies would suggest the problem is even worse. Global MRV tested out their portable emissions equipment in 2011 comparing 12-motorcycles to 12-cars of varying years (this was featured on an episode of Mythbusters). Motorcycles were almost universally terrible, with motorbikes from the 2000’s producing 3,220% more NOx and 8,065% more CO2 than cars of the same era. California has the largest motorcycle ridership in the country, and in 2008 the LA Times reported that while motorcycles accounted for 1% of all miles traveled, they were responsible for 10% of the state’s smog-producing emissions. Taken from https://autowise.com/motorcycle-vs-car-emissions/ https://autowise.com/motorcycle-vs-car-emissions/ . I've had my M1 since 1994, so I enjoy riding, so please don't take this as all negative. But it's important to look at the real data, which is much worse than people think with regards to emissions and pollution.
bigbubba 6y ago
Taxing milage directly seems to have worse distribution properties than taxing gas. Here is what I mean: Suppose I am driving from New York to Alaska; I fill up my car with gas then drive into Ontario. I have now paid New York a gas tax but I'm driving on Ontario roads; Ontario gets paid nothing for this wear and tear.. until I run out of gas inside Ontario. Then Ontario gets their cut. This continues all the way until I reach Alaska. The money isn't distributed perfectly, but it is distributed. Now imagine I am instead taxed by the mile. If the car is registered in New York, does New York get all the milage tax? Do they give any of that to Ontario when I tell them I was in Ontario? Probably not, and it would require a lot of book keeping for me to keep track of all the places I've been. Does Ontario instead check my milage at the borders and charge me an exit fee? That seems impractical and potentially problematic. Is some sort of vehicle tracking system used to fairly distribute the money wherever I drove? Such mass surveillance is obviously problematic. I don't know what the answer is, except for imposing a tax anywhere I purchase gas (or electricity.) That's the least bad solution I can think of.
- zozbot234 6y ago
  You could tax electricity at public EV charging stations. That would have the same desirable distribution properties as the existing gas tax.
  - bigbubba 6y ago
    Yes, I think this is the best way to do it. It may also make sense to tax residential power to fund roads, since many electric car owners will primarily be charging at home. Perhaps this electricity tax could be limited to people who are registered as owning electric cars. That would follow the same principle of applying the tax where the fueling/charging is performed.
  - dmurray 6y ago
    It's likely most electricity for EVs will be consumed at home, though.
    - 6y ago
coco87 6y ago
I have to pay extra tax for my hybrid it’s sucks because the battery is old and my fuel efficiency is way down like a regular car so yeah I feel picked in for having the the car hey upvote this because it’s true you I never post but this means something to me guys
wldcordeiro 6y ago
That sounds like a solution that wouldn't ever get traction in the US with the love of stupidly large trucks and SUVs.
jeffbee 6y ago
Your analysis is fine but the first step, or a concurrent step, needs to be tripling that motor fuel tax. That would only just barely bring it up to the necessary level of carbon taxation, nevermind the roads.
- robocat 6y ago
  Facts: * One litre of petrol creates 2.3kg of CO². * A going market price for an offset is $25-50 per metric ton So the tax per litre to offset the CO² is 6 to 12 cents.
gambiting 6y ago
"Australian cars right now avg about 13.1 litres per 100km" Wait, that can't be true. That's an insane number if correct. Here in EU a car that averages 7-8L/100km is considered to have poor fuel economy. My previous car was a Mercedes AMG that over 4 years averaged 12L/100km and that was considered absolutely abysmal by everyone, people were wondering how I can afford the fuel for it. And you're telling me that the average for Australian cars is higher than that??
- 0xfaded 6y ago
  1. Ford Ranger 2. Toyota Hilux 3. Toyota Rav4 4. Hyundai i30 5. Mazda CX5 6. Toyota Land Cruiser 13.1L/100km seems pretty good in context.
  - gambiting 6y ago
    Does it? In Europe you would only have something like the Hilux, RAV4 or the Land Cruiser with a diesel engine, and then maybe on a bad day they would average 8L/100km. More like 5-6L/100km in normal use. I imagine if those were fitted with a big petrol engine then those numbers would explode, but then the idea of a big work truck fitted with anything other than a diesel just seems wasteful.
    - 0xfaded 6y ago
      Diesels are about 25% in Australia. In my extended family, several are mechanics, everyone has land cruisers. But second cars are also common. My parents have a Hyundai Ionic and a Prado (smaller land cruiser). I live in Europe now, and you simply can't compare the driving to Australia. Some roads are genuinely scary with the occasional cow or roo to hit. Electrification is much more feasible in Europe, and the sooner the better. Every little diesel engine sounds like a truck. Now if only they would stop piling the taxes on electrics ...
- mcguire 6y ago
  For USians, that's 18 mpg. Low, but not horrible for some trucks and large SUVs.
IronRanger 6y ago
The solution is to tax vehicles by weight, and time and location of use. Melbourne, the State Capital of Victoria, has a big problem with congestion at peak hours. If road use charging like in Singapore or London was introduced, it would shift usage to non-peak hours, and raise sufficient revenue to offset fuel excise. But that's politically difficult - whereas applying a tax to EVs, which currently very few people use, is much easier.
- AmericanChopper 6y ago
  Singapore isn’t comparable to this situation at all. To simply purchase a car in Singapore you need to purchase something called a certificate of entitlement, which entitles you to own a car for 10 years. They’re sold by tender, with different tenders for different types of cars. But you’re looking at about $30k USD just to buy the right to then buy a car. Singapore is also a country where essentially the entire country is covered by mass transit.
  - ungamedplayer 6y ago
    That.. and a person can walk across it in a day. You cant walk across brisbane or many of the capitals in Australia in a day.
    - Thlom 6y ago
      Yes, but it's the mass car usage that have caused Australian, American and many European cities to spread out to such an extent that walking or cycling or even transit is no longer an option for most people.
      - AmericanChopper 6y ago
        Car usage certainly hasn't caused that at all. Many people want that because they don't want to live in the type of environment, or in the type of accommodation you will find, in high density central city living. This has been the case since long before the car was even invented.
ip26 6y ago
One of the simplest arguments against it to me is basically to look at the landscape. For example, in the US, ballpark 1% of cars are electric. Meanwhile, the flat federal fuel tax is not indexed to inflation & hasn't been increased in almost thirty years. Yet everyone is in this panic about how EVs are going to cause a huge revenue shortfall!? I'm not opposed to EVs paying their share, but something is rotten in Denmark. Anyway, shifting fuel taxes onto tires might make sense. All cars use tires, no matter the fuel, it requires no odometer reading, and a tire has a designed application & load range which ought to translate reasonably well to anticipated road wear.
- mikeklaas 6y ago
  Good thought, but that might incentivize not replacing worn tires
  - ip26 6y ago
    Yeah, thinking more you are right. The tax would be quite substantial too, and probably drive a large black market.
  - reitzensteinm 6y ago
    This is exactly right. You're in a sense taxing safety!
- rconti 6y ago
  yeah, once we get to 25% adoption (or something) we can talk about how badly EVs are hurting fuel tax revenue. in the meantime, jack up the fuel tax in a planned, regular way, and let the market decide :)
  - jejones3141 6y ago
    Jack up tax and let the market decide? Those seem inconsistent.
  - URSpider94 6y ago
    That might be rational, but it’s highly unpopular with the 99% of people who don’t drive electric cars. This is virtue signaling,
perlgeek 6y ago
> That said - I think the only real answer here is a more thorough overhaul of how you tax road usage. Perhaps it's time to ditch the fuel excise tax entirely, and tax all drivers based on (vehicle weight * kms driven * some constant). If you want to tax fairly based on road wear, you have to tax by axle weight to the 4th power * distance driven. That said, there's a pretty simple solution that doesn't send the same "we are punishing EV owners with an extra tax" message: have a road usage tax for everyone, and slightly decrease the fuel tax. But please, PLEASE, keep most of the fuel tax. Climate change is a real, urgent issue, and everything that encourages change away from fossil fuel should be kept.
- lutorm 6y ago
  You could make all vehicles pay road usage tax, keep charging fuel tax and use the latter to subsidize fuel efficient vehicles. It doesn't solve the question of how to make that palatable to the majority of people who can't afford an EV, though, even with subsidies.
viraptor 6y ago
> tax all drivers based on (... kms driven This is just not realistic to apply, and especially in Australia. You'd need someone to actually record those numbers, which would be a massive overhead of salaries on its own. Then you have crazy distances... you'd either send the inspector to that single farm 300km from the nearest town, or force people running it to being the trucks in for a check monthly.
- Too 6y ago
  Trucks already have regular checkups of odometer, to verify speed limits has not been exceeded, not 100% sure but it might even include checking time in flight, for sleeping-regulations. In Europe.
- horsawlarway 6y ago
  No reason to not just tie it to the rego. Let the drivers report the odometer reading, and add the amount for the last period to the new cost. You'd get some folks who lie, but there's already inspections in place for sales in some states. If the owner wants to sell the vehicle, require an odometer check and a final payment. Basically - I don't really think there's a ton of extra admin cost here. Most folks will self report just fine. Plus, we should be encouraging emissions inspections anyway. At least in the US many states require yearly or bi-yearly inspections to confirm nothing is wrong with the emissions systems in the vehicle. Good way to encourage basic maintenance and to vet manufacturer emission claims against real world data. It's tied to yearly vehicle registration there too, and includes an odometer reading.
an_opabinia 6y ago
> For electric, it was worse - because they do tend to be more expensive to purchase up front, and they paid no fuel tax at all California was cutting $10,000 checks to rich people buying $80,000 sports cars called Teslas. You could be a solo driver in an HOV lane for a long period of time, in a part of the world where rich people's negative experience with the outside world is disproportionately traffic. For every two Teslas worth of subsidies, for rich people who might actually drive very little, you could buy a poor person who actually needs a car a whole Prius. > Encourage drivers to move to lighter vehicles which cause less wear and tear on the road As other people said everyone benefits from roads. Cyclists still need food delivered to grocery stations in trucks. Parents still have their kids driven around in busses. Everyone needs construction vehicles to build more housing. The vast majority of the value of roads is realized by commuters. It's not even just the long-ass trip some sucker makes commuting from his low cost community in the boonies. There are a dozen different trucks that need to go that same trip to wildly inefficiently provide him with services. The most logical thing to do would be to tax surburban and rural residents at a state level, and sending that money back to cities. That lifestyle is so preposterously inefficient as an alternative to paying a landlord absolutely more but relatively less to live in a city. Suburban and rural dwellers just externalize their costs to the city people collecting their garbage, running their government, banks and hospitals, teaching their kids, training their police, firefighters, running their courtrooms, etc. - stuff they imagine is in "their" communities but is essentially welfare from vastly richer cities.
- kortilla 6y ago
  Sounds like the logical thing to do is to heavily tax employers that place offices in cities and force people to commute to the same place as everyone else where there isn’t adequate housing. Additionally, heavy taxes should be levied on the city dwellers that devastate nearby communities to externalize their water supplies, their power generation, their food growth, etc. I think you’ll pretty quickly find that you can make whatever lame arguments you want how people should and shouldn’t live. Just tax the specific negative externality you want to reduce and move on. Don’t sit there and moralize about other lifestyles.
- Thlom 6y ago
ACow_Adonis 6y ago
Aside from an attempt to generate some inelastic revenue during a pandemic, I'm seeing very little talk of the other probable policy goal/implication of this change: that is to say, disincentives against cars and private transport in general with a hope to substitute to public transport. Like comparisons of Apple to Intel debates, this one is missing the clear other player in the room. While it's arguable about how successful this is in either pragmatic or policy terms, dropping the context that the government is investing in both: a) cross city train tunnel b) outer suburban loop c) airport line through Sunshine interchange d) faster trains from Geelong upgrade is to likely lose some important perspective. This is on top of Melbourne's (which makes up easily the vast majority of the population of the state) already impressive public transport infrastructure. Again, maybe this seems weird because people are interpreting it from the frame of private vehicle ownership, where the comparison is between ICT and EV. But that's not the correct comparison: it's actually a policy of moving between private and public transport. And from that perspective, it can also arguably make sense from an environment perspective as well.
- souprock 6y ago
  It doesn't make sense from a virus perspective. Public transport is a thing of the past.
  - ACow_Adonis 6y ago
    Well, while i think that it's a valid point to raise the question of public transport in a pandemic, judging by the number of people on the tram I just caught to the market, I'd be inclined to say that public transport might quip "rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated". Regardless, the government, both state and federal, is investing major dollars over the next 10 years on infrastructure which assumes the opposite, and given the current infrastructure is already there, i think its a bit premature to talk of the future with such certainty.
- lopmotr 6y ago
  Isn't the whole argument for public transport that it has lower CO2 emissions per passenger-mile than private cars? Electric cars in a country with a high proportion of electricity generated renewably (24% and rising) could be better than diesel busses.
truculent 6y ago
> Perhaps it's time to ditch the fuel excise tax entirely, and tax all drivers based on (vehicle weight * kms driven * some constant). How about means testing through progressive taxation of income or wealth?
mulmen 6y ago
I think use tax on infrastructure is a bad idea full stop. If you want to encourage more efficient cars or less driving do it with car tabs. I don't need to drive my car on a road to derive value form it. In the same way that I don't have children but still benefit from schools. Property taxes should be the source of funding for infrastructure projects. Use taxes are regressive and result in underfunded infrastructure with the wealthy paying less and adding another barrier to the poor making ends meet.
lmilcin 6y ago
I think you misunderstand what the road tax (or any other tax) is for. There are three main reasons for a tax to exist: 1. To bring revenue 2. To create incentive 3. Social justice (or illusion of it) Revenue from a specific tax is almost never used for a specific purpose. All revenue goes into a large bin from which the government takes to finance everything. Revenue from fuel/road tax is not used to finance building roads. Infrastructure is financed from budget or by private companies who then can impose tolls on road users. Fuel tax (besides obvious goal of creating revenue) is there to create incentive to drive less and to drive more efficiently (using less fuel). This is not to preserve roads but rather to preserve capacity and environment. I can only assume that tax on electric vehicles is as a response to increasing use of EVs. Initially, EVs were exempted from taxes to create incentive to use them more. Now that it is pretty clear EVs took off and will be widespread no matter what, some countries start to remove those exemptions to ensure continuing revenue stream.
- askvictor 6y ago
  > Initially, EVs were exempted from taxes to create incentive to use them more. Now that it is pretty clear EVs took off and will be widespread no matter what, some countries start to remove those exemptions to ensure continuing revenue stream. I suspect that EVs weren't exempted by design, but just slipped through the gap. Australian road tax is applied to petrol/gasoline/diesel. The number of EVs hasn't warranted changing this formula (the alternative being a tax on kms traveled). In Australia, EVs still haven't taken off (as there haven't been any incentives to buy them; in fact as they tend to be expensive, they often fall under the luxury car category and get taxed even more), so there are still very, very few on the road. It's very slowly changing, and this change is definitely looking into the next decade more that the next year, but still strikes me as odd timing - just when momentum is building to EVs, this will dull that momentum (at least without an incentive to _purchase_ an EV.
- AlotOfReading 6y ago
  I'm not sure how it works in your country, but in the US fuel taxes don't go to the general pot, they end up in a specific fund called the Highway Trust Fund that's specifically earmarked for transportation infrastructure and maintenance.
m0zg 6y ago
Agreed. Electrics are also substantially heavier, and therefore they cause more road wear, much like light trucks. In the US tax incentives for electrics are also de-facto giving money to the rich. The poor aren't buying electric cars. In some states there's now an upper cut off somewhere around 30K selling price for subsidies, but really, the subsidy needs to be income-based, not price based, and I say this as someone who's firmly upper middle class. It's completely idiotic to subsidize me for buying what amounts to an extreme luxury item. > 13.1 litres per 100km This seems crazy high even by US standards. My 300 horsepower 6 cylinder BMW, for example, uses 9.7L per 100km, and I drive mostly in the city.
bbarnett 6y ago
With respect to road damage via heavier vehicles, as other posts discuss, I won't. Not because it isn't real, but because the debate has been going on for, oh, 50+ years. Thus, conflating that issue with this, will result in an utter and relentless logjam. So back to your post, one thing I'm utterly against is taxing per distance driven. Why? Privacy. There are already talks all over the place, discussions in government, of having a GPS tracker counting distance. Some even discuss real time uploads to the government, others monthly dumps. Sorry, no. No, no, no. In fact, not sorry. :P Because talk about full time surveillance! I realise that in some nations, like the UK, who have RFID/TPMS trackers, and license plate trackers all over the place, this might seem normal. But I do not want that here.
- ryan_j_naughton 6y ago
  There is a way to charge for distance without gps tracking or such levels of privacy invasion. For example, tolls where you pay cash is a solution. Obviously, that is adding a transaction cost, which is not desirable. But let's think of a more privacy secure way to create an easy pass like system. The obvious problem of easypass systems is they track cars by license plates and thus create a massive database of which car went through when. But it could be legally required to purge the license plate data of cars that paid. You could get a signal when going through the tollway that indicates the amount to pay. You could send a transaction via a cryptocurrency with a signed message on the transaction and then a separate API call to the state tollway system telling them which license plate was just paid for by the transaction. Then any vehicles that had paid would be converted into effectively cash records with the license plate number purged. Thus, data is only retained on those who broke the law and didn't pay. While obviously this requires a government to see privacy as enough of a concern to adopt such data purge policies, it is totally possible. If anyone else can think of a way to allow pay for road usage solutions that are more privacy secure, I'd love to hear them.
  - bbarnett 6y ago
    Two things. There is no system on Earth which tracks, which you can ever, ever trust to be purged. We already have issues with state actors, all over all of our democracies, constantly stepping out of bounds. They spy where they are not allowed, play tricks with the letter of the law. For example, 5-eyes, where Canada is not allowed to spy on Canadians, and the UK on UK citizens, so each spy on the other's citizens, then hand the data over. Or recent stories in the US, of the government buying data from the private sector. They can't spy, so they pay the private sector to spy. I have zero faith that any scenario where data is harvested, that it won't be illegally/immorally/sneakily used. And history, that all important metric, 100% backs up that this sort of thing happens again, and again, and again. So point #1? There's no scenario where we can ever trust 'track and delete'. Nor, can we ever trust any 'black box' in a car. EG, if we cannot open it, examine it (something highly unlikely in a metering device), no way will I ever trust it. Number 2? Tolls are beyond impossible. I think you must live in a population dense area, to believe they are viable. Yet think of rural routes, side roads, or just normal non-freeway roads. There are many 100s of millions of miles of these, and they greatly outnumber freeways. They cost upkeep too. I often go 6 months without driving on a freeway, where I live. I know many people who drive thousands of km a month, yet are entirely on rural roads. There isn't even network connectivity, including cell, in some of these areas. Phones. Loads of roads have no power lines, are just 'connect this dirt road to this dirt road', yet see a thousand cars a day. As a side note, right now, we aren't paying per km. People driving a sports car, get 1/2 or 1/4 the gas mileage of a little smart car or some such. Yet, they both pay the same for gas. Two things bother me here: 1) The whole reason most jurisdictions have 'tax people when paid', is because many people cannot save, and even if they could, literally have no money left at the end of the year. If there is some 'pay later' or 'show up yearly, be tolled, and pay' scenario, this won't work well. Not at all. Collections alone is a horrible cost on any service, which costs immensely. 2) We already have odometers, which are theoretically sealed, illegal to monkey with, tied to car value, and with a HUGE history of laws / court action wrapped around them. Anything can be monkeyed with or hacked, ANYTHING, so my point here is that odometers are already in the car, show distance, and have laws protecting them. And even, already, mechanics fully aware of the punishment for tampering with them. (Odometer replacement even legally requires setting the replacement to the same as the old, etc, etc, or making an indelible note of it.) But I also take objection to the government knowing how much I drive. Or when. Really, I don't think this is much of a problem though. The whole reason Tesla went with electric, is because Musk wanted reliable gear for Mars. Can't use O2 burners there, so H2 was out. With the recycling costs, slow charging of batteries, this is only a stopgap. H2 is where we're going, over the next decade. Once that happens, taxation will be back where it was anyhow. At the pump.

Wowfunhappy 6y ago

> Encourage drivers to move to lighter vehicles which cause less wear and tear on the road, and drop the disparity between fuel and electric. They both use the same tires. And what of the damage that non-electric vehicles do to the environment? Shouldn't we be accounting for that? At least roads can be easily repaired.

kanox 6y ago

> Right now, EVs are absolutely creating an regressive tax situation with regards to fuel. Those who can afford to buy newer, efficient cars can usually save money on tax over those who can't. For electric, it was worse - because they do tend to be more expensive to purchase up front, and they paid no fuel tax at all. Encouraging the adoption of cleaner but more expensive technology is always going to be regressive, no way around this. A lot of environmental regulation has strong regressive effects, it hits coal miners much harder than people sipping 10$ coffee on their macbook.

kilotaras 6y ago
I'm of mind that all government "monetary disincentives", e.g. fines, sin taxes, pollution taxes should go into fee and dividend scheme. Solves both moral hazard (we want more fines/driving because we need revenue) and regressive nature of those.
- Gibbon1 6y ago
  I thought of that for a long time. Finally decided that fines should be handed over the Social Security Admin and booked against the offenders account.

JTbane 6y ago

Or just increase the gas and diesel taxes, which has a win-win of encouraging EV adoption and cutting down on CO2 emissions.

brokenmachine 6y ago

>tax all drivers based on (vehicle weight x kms driven x some constant). But what about my mates who own the trucking companies? Are you implying they should pay their fair share?

CryptoPunk 6y ago

>>That said - I think the only real answer here is a more thorough overhaul of how you tax road usage. Perhaps it's time to ditch the fuel excise tax entirely, and tax all drivers based on (vehicle weight * kms driven * some constant). Also congestion. Charging based on how much congestion is on a roadway while a car uses it will reduce traffic during peak times and increase how much economic value the road transportation network contributes by making the most valuable use-cases get priority access to roads during peak demand periods, while spreading out driving across a larger range of hours to reduce overall delays to traffic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congestion_pricing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congestion_pricing Traffic is basically due to a scarce economic resource - road space during peak times - having no pricing to prioritize its use. People thereby pay for road space during rush hour by paying in time stuck in traffic, which is a very inefficient economic mechanism for determining the allocation of scarce resources.

seanmcdirmid 6y ago

Taxing by weight will put EVs at a disadvantage given batteries are heavy compared to fully loaded fuel tanks.

qqn 6y ago

"The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. "Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. "But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet." Terry Pratchett, https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/72745-the-reason-that-the-rich-were-so-rich-vimes-reasoned https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/72745-the-reason-that-the-r...

yaacov 6y ago

> The EV industry accepts that a road user charge is inevitable as the car fleets transition to electric, but argue it should be introduced fairly and evenly. It points out the petrol excise goes into general revenue rather than road funding, and EV owners pay more tax than petrol car owners due to higher taxes from GST, stamp duty, and luxury car tax. I think it's ok for one particular tax to be regressive if the general taxation scheme is not.

horsawlarway 6y ago
I'm not really sure I agree the general taxation scheme is not regressive still. It varies, but at least for ACT, they waive stamp tax on new electric cars, and registration is $100 cheaper. I also didn't include GST tax for fuel in my numbers above (10% of total fuel cost). So yes, luxury tax does kick in at a lower number (which I find silly), but I think overall, you're still creating a situation where electric is paying less to use the same roads. That said - Agree with the line you quoted. I think an even and fair tax makes sense, but I don't see how you do that at the local level when the fuel tax is federal.

donaltroddyn 6y ago

How do you track the number of Kms driven? Is it possible to do so while maintaining the privacy of individuals?

Too 6y ago
It's more difficult than that: How do you track the number of Kms driven on public roads. As claimed purpose of tax was to cover the wear on these.
singhrac 6y ago
Every car has an odometer... one could think of a relatively convenient scheme where you can get your car inspected once a year at any refueling station, and tampering with the odometer is a crime. Won't stop everyone, but does it matter?
- donaltroddyn 6y ago
  I don't think Odometers are reliable enough, especially as the basis for a tax. You'd certainly see an increase in average tyre size!
  - adrianN 6y ago
    They're probably accurate to within less than 10%. How many kilometers would you have to drive to save a dollar from slightly bigger tyres?
    - donaltroddyn 6y ago
      I was being slightly facetious in referencing tyre size, although people regularly have to adjust speedo/odometers by 10% or more when fitting large tyres on off-roaders. Odometers can have their values changed at will, at least in ICE vehicles, often for valid reasons.
      - jdashg 6y ago

somesortofsystm 6y ago

I dunno, I think this is a pretty draconian imposition by a state known for its decadence in a country that used to like to think it was a leader in building new infrastructure in tough conditions. With all the energy resources at Australians' disposal, it sure seems off-kilter to not be rewarding those who chose to go more efficient. Would that there were Australias own local industry capable of competing with Tesla .. and I say that as a once-proud Australian. With a local industry leading the way, as usual, the Australian government could get a clue.

lopmotr 6y ago
They will be rewarded. It's half the tax of petrol vehicles and the fuels is also much cheaper on top of that.
- somesortofsystm 6y ago
  The point is, Australia could move off fossil fuels quicker than most other countries, and has one of the biggest motivators for doing so - its environment. However, the will of the people is not there. Or at least, the technology to disrupt Australia's coal and oil junkies, isn't there.

coryrc 6y ago

The vast majority of road damage is done by heavy trucks. Don't need to tax these cars at all.

horsawlarway 6y ago
I think there's a lot of truth in that. That why I was so specific about including weight as a factor.
bnt 6y ago
But you still need to maintain existing and build new roads, and not only trucks drive on the road. What about snow? It needs to be removed for normal cars as well as trucks.
- tshaddox 6y ago
  Snow removal is probably different, but the point is that road maintenance due to regular road wear would be significantly (perhaps at least an order of magnitude) less if there were only passenger cars on the road.
- adrianN 6y ago
  It also needs to be removed for bicycles and pedestrians, who don't pay special taxes for that.
  - bnt 6y ago
    But bicycles don’t cause air pollution nor do they damage the roads. So you got me puzzled why they should be taxes. Pedestrians are taxed too much anyway
    - adrianN 6y ago
      I was making an argument against taxing EVs. Or I tried to.
- coryrc 6y ago

recursive 6y ago

I read somewhere that road damage caused by vehicles is not linear with weight. Heavy vehicles do much more damage. I can't cite a source, but I recall an exponent between 3 and 4 on the leading term. With that in mind, everything but heavy freight is basically negligible. And then it's generally for businesses where privacy isn't so much of an issue.

AnthonyMouse 6y ago
You can also sidestep the privacy issue there, because large electric vehicles are likely to need special chargers. (How many kW do you need to charge a 1MWh battery in a reasonable amount of time?) And then you can levy road tax on large trucks per kWh at the charging point in the traditional way without even having to track everywhere they go.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  How much privacy concern is there to have your odometer reading recorded annually in places that already do safety inspections? I mean, I've driven an average of 3400 miles per year on my car. Violate my privacy as much as you like with that data.
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    There have been proposals to track the location of trucks at all times, presumably so that a truck that drives all over the country is paying road fees in the states where it's actually driving instead of to whatever other state it's registered in (which would presumably be the one with the lowest fees). Levying the fees at the charging point replicates the existing (imperfect but pretty good) model with fuel tax because you at least have to charge somewhere that you're actually driving that day, without the privacy implications of tracking the vehicle at all times.
fuoqi 6y ago
This was one of the argued motivation for introducing the Platon system in Russia in addition to the fuel tax. It's an electronic toll system mandatory for trucks over 12 tons and costs every such truck ~5 USD cents per traveled km. Unfortunately it does not take into account current mass of a truck (probably because it's much harder to control and easier to cheat). Part of the proceedings goes to a federal fund for road maintenance, another one to the company (partially owned by an oligarch close to Putin) which has developed the system and currently maintenance it. This concession will work until 2027.

davidivadavid 6y ago

As a European, 13.1 l/100 km seems... insane. What's happening here?

alkonaut 6y ago
Has to be including heavy vehicles? Australians still by V8’s but not that many of them can be...
- dmurray 6y ago
  It is including heavy vehicles, but also motorcycles. The average for "passenger vehicles" is still about 10.5 l/km. Just bigger cars I think. https://www.budgetdirect.com.au/car-insurance/research/average-fuel-consumption-australia.html https://www.budgetdirect.com.au/car-insurance/research/avera...
  - Baeocystin 6y ago
    Motorcycles, perhaps surprisingly, aren't all that much more efficient than regular gas cars. The tl;dr is that their aerodynamics are terrible, and their engines not tuned for fuel efficiency.
    - jholman 6y ago
      Hmn. Brief research seems to show that you're more correct than I would have expected, but also that it's less true than I think you imply. For example, https://afdc.energy.gov/data/10310 https://afdc.energy.gov/data/10310 gives motorcycles as almost 2x as efficient as cars, almost 3x as efficient as "light truck / van". Given that enormous amount of metal that's not being hauled around, I would have expected a bigger difference. Nonetheless, for single-occupant travel, halving transportation carbon footprint would be quite a great thing.
      - Baeocystin 6y ago
        >Before any new car hits the showroom, the EPA runs an emissions evaluation and calculates a “CO2 equivalent” – a single number that represents GHGs CO2, NO X , HC, and CO. The CO2 equivalent units are in grams/mile, so a higher number means more GHGs and more climate damage. For a 2WD 2020 Ram 1500 HFE on the highway, that number is 340 g/mile. Unfortunately, motorcycle emissions data isn’t documented by the EPA. This is a real issue, because if the problem isn’t measured you don’t know what to fix. >There are a few independent studies that shed light on the issue, however. One published in 2008 by Swiss researchers took real data from several motorbikes including a BMW R1150GS. The GS highway CO2 equivalent is a stunning 380 g/mile (17% worse than the Dodge)! They found that a 1993 Honda Shadow VX600 with only 583 ccs spews a whopping 408 g/mile. That is twice as much as a new Honda Civic! >Other studies would suggest the problem is even worse. Global MRV tested out their portable emissions equipment in 2011 comparing 12-motorcycles to 12-cars of varying years (this was featured on an episode of Mythbusters). Motorcycles were almost universally terrible, with motorbikes from the 2000’s producing 3,220% more NOx and 8,065% more CO2 than cars of the same era. California has the largest motorcycle ridership in the country, and in 2008 the LA Times reported that while motorcycles accounted for 1% of all miles traveled, they were responsible for 10% of the state’s smog-producing emissions. Taken from https://autowise.com/motorcycle-vs-car-emissions/ https://autowise.com/motorcycle-vs-car-emissions/ . I've had my M1 since 1994, so I enjoy riding, so please don't take this as all negative. But it's important to look at the real data, which is much worse than people think with regards to emissions and pollution.

bigbubba 6y ago

Taxing milage directly seems to have worse distribution properties than taxing gas. Here is what I mean: Suppose I am driving from New York to Alaska; I fill up my car with gas then drive into Ontario. I have now paid New York a gas tax but I'm driving on Ontario roads; Ontario gets paid nothing for this wear and tear.. until I run out of gas inside Ontario. Then Ontario gets their cut. This continues all the way until I reach Alaska. The money isn't distributed perfectly, but it is distributed. Now imagine I am instead taxed by the mile. If the car is registered in New York, does New York get all the milage tax? Do they give any of that to Ontario when I tell them I was in Ontario? Probably not, and it would require a lot of book keeping for me to keep track of all the places I've been. Does Ontario instead check my milage at the borders and charge me an exit fee? That seems impractical and potentially problematic. Is some sort of vehicle tracking system used to fairly distribute the money wherever I drove? Such mass surveillance is obviously problematic. I don't know what the answer is, except for imposing a tax anywhere I purchase gas (or electricity.) That's the least bad solution I can think of.

zozbot234 6y ago
You could tax electricity at public EV charging stations. That would have the same desirable distribution properties as the existing gas tax.
- bigbubba 6y ago
  Yes, I think this is the best way to do it. It may also make sense to tax residential power to fund roads, since many electric car owners will primarily be charging at home. Perhaps this electricity tax could be limited to people who are registered as owning electric cars. That would follow the same principle of applying the tax where the fueling/charging is performed.
- dmurray 6y ago
  It's likely most electricity for EVs will be consumed at home, though.
  - 6y ago

coco87 6y ago

I have to pay extra tax for my hybrid it’s sucks because the battery is old and my fuel efficiency is way down like a regular car so yeah I feel picked in for having the the car hey upvote this because it’s true you I never post but this means something to me guys

wldcordeiro 6y ago

That sounds like a solution that wouldn't ever get traction in the US with the love of stupidly large trucks and SUVs.

jeffbee 6y ago

Your analysis is fine but the first step, or a concurrent step, needs to be tripling that motor fuel tax. That would only just barely bring it up to the necessary level of carbon taxation, nevermind the roads.

robocat 6y ago
Facts: * One litre of petrol creates 2.3kg of CO². * A going market price for an offset is $25-50 per metric ton So the tax per litre to offset the CO² is 6 to 12 cents.

gambiting 6y ago

"Australian cars right now avg about 13.1 litres per 100km" Wait, that can't be true. That's an insane number if correct. Here in EU a car that averages 7-8L/100km is considered to have poor fuel economy. My previous car was a Mercedes AMG that over 4 years averaged 12L/100km and that was considered absolutely abysmal by everyone, people were wondering how I can afford the fuel for it. And you're telling me that the average for Australian cars is higher than that??

0xfaded 6y ago
1. Ford Ranger 2. Toyota Hilux 3. Toyota Rav4 4. Hyundai i30 5. Mazda CX5 6. Toyota Land Cruiser 13.1L/100km seems pretty good in context.
- gambiting 6y ago
  Does it? In Europe you would only have something like the Hilux, RAV4 or the Land Cruiser with a diesel engine, and then maybe on a bad day they would average 8L/100km. More like 5-6L/100km in normal use. I imagine if those were fitted with a big petrol engine then those numbers would explode, but then the idea of a big work truck fitted with anything other than a diesel just seems wasteful.
  - 0xfaded 6y ago
    Diesels are about 25% in Australia. In my extended family, several are mechanics, everyone has land cruisers. But second cars are also common. My parents have a Hyundai Ionic and a Prado (smaller land cruiser). I live in Europe now, and you simply can't compare the driving to Australia. Some roads are genuinely scary with the occasional cow or roo to hit. Electrification is much more feasible in Europe, and the sooner the better. Every little diesel engine sounds like a truck. Now if only they would stop piling the taxes on electrics ...
mcguire 6y ago
For USians, that's 18 mpg. Low, but not horrible for some trucks and large SUVs.

IronRanger 6y ago

The solution is to tax vehicles by weight, and time and location of use. Melbourne, the State Capital of Victoria, has a big problem with congestion at peak hours. If road use charging like in Singapore or London was introduced, it would shift usage to non-peak hours, and raise sufficient revenue to offset fuel excise. But that's politically difficult - whereas applying a tax to EVs, which currently very few people use, is much easier.

AmericanChopper 6y ago
Singapore isn’t comparable to this situation at all. To simply purchase a car in Singapore you need to purchase something called a certificate of entitlement, which entitles you to own a car for 10 years. They’re sold by tender, with different tenders for different types of cars. But you’re looking at about $30k USD just to buy the right to then buy a car. Singapore is also a country where essentially the entire country is covered by mass transit.
- ungamedplayer 6y ago
  That.. and a person can walk across it in a day. You cant walk across brisbane or many of the capitals in Australia in a day.
  - Thlom 6y ago
    Yes, but it's the mass car usage that have caused Australian, American and many European cities to spread out to such an extent that walking or cycling or even transit is no longer an option for most people.
    - AmericanChopper 6y ago
      Car usage certainly hasn't caused that at all. Many people want that because they don't want to live in the type of environment, or in the type of accommodation you will find, in high density central city living. This has been the case since long before the car was even invented.

ip26 6y ago

One of the simplest arguments against it to me is basically to look at the landscape. For example, in the US, ballpark 1% of cars are electric. Meanwhile, the flat federal fuel tax is not indexed to inflation & hasn't been increased in almost thirty years. Yet everyone is in this panic about how EVs are going to cause a huge revenue shortfall!? I'm not opposed to EVs paying their share, but something is rotten in Denmark. Anyway, shifting fuel taxes onto tires might make sense. All cars use tires, no matter the fuel, it requires no odometer reading, and a tire has a designed application & load range which ought to translate reasonably well to anticipated road wear.

mikeklaas 6y ago
Good thought, but that might incentivize not replacing worn tires
- ip26 6y ago
  Yeah, thinking more you are right. The tax would be quite substantial too, and probably drive a large black market.
- reitzensteinm 6y ago
  This is exactly right. You're in a sense taxing safety!
rconti 6y ago
yeah, once we get to 25% adoption (or something) we can talk about how badly EVs are hurting fuel tax revenue. in the meantime, jack up the fuel tax in a planned, regular way, and let the market decide :)
- jejones3141 6y ago
  Jack up tax and let the market decide? Those seem inconsistent.
- URSpider94 6y ago
  That might be rational, but it’s highly unpopular with the 99% of people who don’t drive electric cars. This is virtue signaling,

perlgeek 6y ago

> That said - I think the only real answer here is a more thorough overhaul of how you tax road usage. Perhaps it's time to ditch the fuel excise tax entirely, and tax all drivers based on (vehicle weight * kms driven * some constant). If you want to tax fairly based on road wear, you have to tax by axle weight to the 4th power * distance driven. That said, there's a pretty simple solution that doesn't send the same "we are punishing EV owners with an extra tax" message: have a road usage tax for everyone, and slightly decrease the fuel tax. But please, PLEASE, keep most of the fuel tax. Climate change is a real, urgent issue, and everything that encourages change away from fossil fuel should be kept.

lutorm 6y ago
You could make all vehicles pay road usage tax, keep charging fuel tax and use the latter to subsidize fuel efficient vehicles. It doesn't solve the question of how to make that palatable to the majority of people who can't afford an EV, though, even with subsidies.

viraptor 6y ago

> tax all drivers based on (... kms driven This is just not realistic to apply, and especially in Australia. You'd need someone to actually record those numbers, which would be a massive overhead of salaries on its own. Then you have crazy distances... you'd either send the inspector to that single farm 300km from the nearest town, or force people running it to being the trucks in for a check monthly.

Too 6y ago
Trucks already have regular checkups of odometer, to verify speed limits has not been exceeded, not 100% sure but it might even include checking time in flight, for sleeping-regulations. In Europe.
horsawlarway 6y ago
No reason to not just tie it to the rego. Let the drivers report the odometer reading, and add the amount for the last period to the new cost. You'd get some folks who lie, but there's already inspections in place for sales in some states. If the owner wants to sell the vehicle, require an odometer check and a final payment. Basically - I don't really think there's a ton of extra admin cost here. Most folks will self report just fine. Plus, we should be encouraging emissions inspections anyway. At least in the US many states require yearly or bi-yearly inspections to confirm nothing is wrong with the emissions systems in the vehicle. Good way to encourage basic maintenance and to vet manufacturer emission claims against real world data. It's tied to yearly vehicle registration there too, and includes an odometer reading.

an_opabinia 6y ago

> For electric, it was worse - because they do tend to be more expensive to purchase up front, and they paid no fuel tax at all California was cutting $10,000 checks to rich people buying $80,000 sports cars called Teslas. You could be a solo driver in an HOV lane for a long period of time, in a part of the world where rich people's negative experience with the outside world is disproportionately traffic. For every two Teslas worth of subsidies, for rich people who might actually drive very little, you could buy a poor person who actually needs a car a whole Prius. > Encourage drivers to move to lighter vehicles which cause less wear and tear on the road As other people said everyone benefits from roads. Cyclists still need food delivered to grocery stations in trucks. Parents still have their kids driven around in busses. Everyone needs construction vehicles to build more housing. The vast majority of the value of roads is realized by commuters. It's not even just the long-ass trip some sucker makes commuting from his low cost community in the boonies. There are a dozen different trucks that need to go that same trip to wildly inefficiently provide him with services. The most logical thing to do would be to tax surburban and rural residents at a state level, and sending that money back to cities. That lifestyle is so preposterously inefficient as an alternative to paying a landlord absolutely more but relatively less to live in a city. Suburban and rural dwellers just externalize their costs to the city people collecting their garbage, running their government, banks and hospitals, teaching their kids, training their police, firefighters, running their courtrooms, etc. - stuff they imagine is in "their" communities but is essentially welfare from vastly richer cities.

kortilla 6y ago
Sounds like the logical thing to do is to heavily tax employers that place offices in cities and force people to commute to the same place as everyone else where there isn’t adequate housing. Additionally, heavy taxes should be levied on the city dwellers that devastate nearby communities to externalize their water supplies, their power generation, their food growth, etc. I think you’ll pretty quickly find that you can make whatever lame arguments you want how people should and shouldn’t live. Just tax the specific negative externality you want to reduce and move on. Don’t sit there and moralize about other lifestyles.
Thlom 6y ago

ACow_Adonis 6y ago

Aside from an attempt to generate some inelastic revenue during a pandemic, I'm seeing very little talk of the other probable policy goal/implication of this change: that is to say, disincentives against cars and private transport in general with a hope to substitute to public transport. Like comparisons of Apple to Intel debates, this one is missing the clear other player in the room. While it's arguable about how successful this is in either pragmatic or policy terms, dropping the context that the government is investing in both: a) cross city train tunnel b) outer suburban loop c) airport line through Sunshine interchange d) faster trains from Geelong upgrade is to likely lose some important perspective. This is on top of Melbourne's (which makes up easily the vast majority of the population of the state) already impressive public transport infrastructure. Again, maybe this seems weird because people are interpreting it from the frame of private vehicle ownership, where the comparison is between ICT and EV. But that's not the correct comparison: it's actually a policy of moving between private and public transport. And from that perspective, it can also arguably make sense from an environment perspective as well.

souprock 6y ago
It doesn't make sense from a virus perspective. Public transport is a thing of the past.
- ACow_Adonis 6y ago
  Well, while i think that it's a valid point to raise the question of public transport in a pandemic, judging by the number of people on the tram I just caught to the market, I'd be inclined to say that public transport might quip "rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated". Regardless, the government, both state and federal, is investing major dollars over the next 10 years on infrastructure which assumes the opposite, and given the current infrastructure is already there, i think its a bit premature to talk of the future with such certainty.
lopmotr 6y ago
Isn't the whole argument for public transport that it has lower CO2 emissions per passenger-mile than private cars? Electric cars in a country with a high proportion of electricity generated renewably (24% and rising) could be better than diesel busses.

truculent 6y ago

> Perhaps it's time to ditch the fuel excise tax entirely, and tax all drivers based on (vehicle weight * kms driven * some constant). How about means testing through progressive taxation of income or wealth?

mulmen 6y ago

I think use tax on infrastructure is a bad idea full stop. If you want to encourage more efficient cars or less driving do it with car tabs. I don't need to drive my car on a road to derive value form it. In the same way that I don't have children but still benefit from schools. Property taxes should be the source of funding for infrastructure projects. Use taxes are regressive and result in underfunded infrastructure with the wealthy paying less and adding another barrier to the poor making ends meet.

lmilcin 6y ago

I think you misunderstand what the road tax (or any other tax) is for. There are three main reasons for a tax to exist: 1. To bring revenue 2. To create incentive 3. Social justice (or illusion of it) Revenue from a specific tax is almost never used for a specific purpose. All revenue goes into a large bin from which the government takes to finance everything. Revenue from fuel/road tax is not used to finance building roads. Infrastructure is financed from budget or by private companies who then can impose tolls on road users. Fuel tax (besides obvious goal of creating revenue) is there to create incentive to drive less and to drive more efficiently (using less fuel). This is not to preserve roads but rather to preserve capacity and environment. I can only assume that tax on electric vehicles is as a response to increasing use of EVs. Initially, EVs were exempted from taxes to create incentive to use them more. Now that it is pretty clear EVs took off and will be widespread no matter what, some countries start to remove those exemptions to ensure continuing revenue stream.

askvictor 6y ago
> Initially, EVs were exempted from taxes to create incentive to use them more. Now that it is pretty clear EVs took off and will be widespread no matter what, some countries start to remove those exemptions to ensure continuing revenue stream. I suspect that EVs weren't exempted by design, but just slipped through the gap. Australian road tax is applied to petrol/gasoline/diesel. The number of EVs hasn't warranted changing this formula (the alternative being a tax on kms traveled). In Australia, EVs still haven't taken off (as there haven't been any incentives to buy them; in fact as they tend to be expensive, they often fall under the luxury car category and get taxed even more), so there are still very, very few on the road. It's very slowly changing, and this change is definitely looking into the next decade more that the next year, but still strikes me as odd timing - just when momentum is building to EVs, this will dull that momentum (at least without an incentive to _purchase_ an EV.
AlotOfReading 6y ago
I'm not sure how it works in your country, but in the US fuel taxes don't go to the general pot, they end up in a specific fund called the Highway Trust Fund that's specifically earmarked for transportation infrastructure and maintenance.

m0zg 6y ago

Agreed. Electrics are also substantially heavier, and therefore they cause more road wear, much like light trucks. In the US tax incentives for electrics are also de-facto giving money to the rich. The poor aren't buying electric cars. In some states there's now an upper cut off somewhere around 30K selling price for subsidies, but really, the subsidy needs to be income-based, not price based, and I say this as someone who's firmly upper middle class. It's completely idiotic to subsidize me for buying what amounts to an extreme luxury item. > 13.1 litres per 100km This seems crazy high even by US standards. My 300 horsepower 6 cylinder BMW, for example, uses 9.7L per 100km, and I drive mostly in the city.

bbarnett 6y ago

With respect to road damage via heavier vehicles, as other posts discuss, I won't. Not because it isn't real, but because the debate has been going on for, oh, 50+ years. Thus, conflating that issue with this, will result in an utter and relentless logjam. So back to your post, one thing I'm utterly against is taxing per distance driven. Why? Privacy. There are already talks all over the place, discussions in government, of having a GPS tracker counting distance. Some even discuss real time uploads to the government, others monthly dumps. Sorry, no. No, no, no. In fact, not sorry. :P Because talk about full time surveillance! I realise that in some nations, like the UK, who have RFID/TPMS trackers, and license plate trackers all over the place, this might seem normal. But I do not want that here.

ryan_j_naughton 6y ago
There is a way to charge for distance without gps tracking or such levels of privacy invasion. For example, tolls where you pay cash is a solution. Obviously, that is adding a transaction cost, which is not desirable. But let's think of a more privacy secure way to create an easy pass like system. The obvious problem of easypass systems is they track cars by license plates and thus create a massive database of which car went through when. But it could be legally required to purge the license plate data of cars that paid. You could get a signal when going through the tollway that indicates the amount to pay. You could send a transaction via a cryptocurrency with a signed message on the transaction and then a separate API call to the state tollway system telling them which license plate was just paid for by the transaction. Then any vehicles that had paid would be converted into effectively cash records with the license plate number purged. Thus, data is only retained on those who broke the law and didn't pay. While obviously this requires a government to see privacy as enough of a concern to adopt such data purge policies, it is totally possible. If anyone else can think of a way to allow pay for road usage solutions that are more privacy secure, I'd love to hear them.
- bbarnett 6y ago
  Two things. There is no system on Earth which tracks, which you can ever, ever trust to be purged. We already have issues with state actors, all over all of our democracies, constantly stepping out of bounds. They spy where they are not allowed, play tricks with the letter of the law. For example, 5-eyes, where Canada is not allowed to spy on Canadians, and the UK on UK citizens, so each spy on the other's citizens, then hand the data over. Or recent stories in the US, of the government buying data from the private sector. They can't spy, so they pay the private sector to spy. I have zero faith that any scenario where data is harvested, that it won't be illegally/immorally/sneakily used. And history, that all important metric, 100% backs up that this sort of thing happens again, and again, and again. So point #1? There's no scenario where we can ever trust 'track and delete'. Nor, can we ever trust any 'black box' in a car. EG, if we cannot open it, examine it (something highly unlikely in a metering device), no way will I ever trust it. Number 2? Tolls are beyond impossible. I think you must live in a population dense area, to believe they are viable. Yet think of rural routes, side roads, or just normal non-freeway roads. There are many 100s of millions of miles of these, and they greatly outnumber freeways. They cost upkeep too. I often go 6 months without driving on a freeway, where I live. I know many people who drive thousands of km a month, yet are entirely on rural roads. There isn't even network connectivity, including cell, in some of these areas. Phones. Loads of roads have no power lines, are just 'connect this dirt road to this dirt road', yet see a thousand cars a day. As a side note, right now, we aren't paying per km. People driving a sports car, get 1/2 or 1/4 the gas mileage of a little smart car or some such. Yet, they both pay the same for gas. Two things bother me here: 1) The whole reason most jurisdictions have 'tax people when paid', is because many people cannot save, and even if they could, literally have no money left at the end of the year. If there is some 'pay later' or 'show up yearly, be tolled, and pay' scenario, this won't work well. Not at all. Collections alone is a horrible cost on any service, which costs immensely. 2) We already have odometers, which are theoretically sealed, illegal to monkey with, tied to car value, and with a HUGE history of laws / court action wrapped around them. Anything can be monkeyed with or hacked, ANYTHING, so my point here is that odometers are already in the car, show distance, and have laws protecting them. And even, already, mechanics fully aware of the punishment for tampering with them. (Odometer replacement even legally requires setting the replacement to the same as the old, etc, etc, or making an indelible note of it.) But I also take objection to the government knowing how much I drive. Or when. Really, I don't think this is much of a problem though. The whole reason Tesla went with electric, is because Musk wanted reliable gear for Mars. Can't use O2 burners there, so H2 was out. With the recycling costs, slow charging of batteries, this is only a stopgap. H2 is where we're going, over the next decade. Once that happens, taxation will be back where it was anyhow. At the pump.