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"Road tax" (a levy to cover the cost of maintaining the public highway) obviously needs to be extended to cover EVs at some point. I'm surprised it hasn't alrea

"Road tax" (a levy to cover the cost of maintaining the public highway) obviously needs to be extended to cover EVs at some point. I'm surprised it hasn't already. However, broadly speaking: tax the thing you want less of. There's various strategies being raised to cover this so-called "lost revenue", including the tracking of your home electricity usage via smart boxes to tax you on charging your own car (!!) and charging cars a per-mile-tax instead of on fuel. But, if we're to believe that EVs are currently being incentivised because the Government wants to lower emissions (and thus avoid any costs of continued nationwide carbon reliance) then perhaps a study should be done to see if the cost-saving of people moving _away_ from ICEs outweighs the lost revenue of taxing petrol/diesel, in the long run.

lettergram 4y ago
> There's various strategies being raised to cover this so-called "lost revenue", including the tracking of your home electricity usage via smart boxes to tax you on charging your own car (!!) and charging cars a per-mile-tax instead of on fuel. 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.
- planede 4y ago
  > 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. Maybe I'm naive, but shouldn't an odometer reading do the job just fine?
rcMgD2BwE72F 4y ago
We should split road taxes and carbon taxes, and ensure both revenue streams cover all the investment and expenses required for the sector but also to cover long-term effects on climate. 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.

lettergram 4y ago

> There's various strategies being raised to cover this so-called "lost revenue", including the tracking of your home electricity usage via smart boxes to tax you on charging your own car (!!) and charging cars a per-mile-tax instead of on fuel. 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.

planede 4y ago
> 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. Maybe I'm naive, but shouldn't an odometer reading do the job just fine?

rcMgD2BwE72F 4y ago

We should split road taxes and carbon taxes, and ensure both revenue streams cover all the investment and expenses required for the sector but also to cover long-term effects on climate. 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.