11 ms·

Utah views EV drivers as tax evaders because they don't buy gas. So they have a "deal" for EV drivers: pay an exorbitant registration fee (hundreds more than ot

by mholt 3y ago

Utah views EV drivers as tax evaders because they don't buy gas. So they have a "deal" for EV drivers: pay an exorbitant registration fee (hundreds more than other vehicles) or install an OBD device in your car and carry a surveillance app to be charged for how much your vehicle is driven [0]. The measurement route requires 2 separate accounts with 3rd parties, one of which has your payment information on file. Given that states can't even get voting right [1], this is not the future I wanted. (Plus, we should be incentivizing EV purchases at this stage, not punishing them.) (Heck, they put my marriage license on a blockchain for some dumb reason. I didn't even want it on a blockchain!) [0]: https://roadusagecharge.utah.gov/ https://roadusagecharge.utah.gov/ [1]: Basically anything by https://twitter.com/jhalderm https://twitter.com/jhalderm

throwaway1777 3y ago
That actually kinda makes sense. EVs should pay their share to use the roads too.
- loeg 3y ago
  (Gas taxes are a relatively small fraction of roads funding, for what it's worth.)
  - kbenson 3y ago
    I'd be interested in seeing the numbers, and how they slice it up (whether they're completely treating federal roads separately or using it for the total, etc), as at $0.364 per gallon in Utah, it seems like it results in a large amount to put towards funding something, so it would be interesting to track where it's going.
    - loeg 3y ago
      Utah’s cent per mile program treats all roads the same, including roads outside of the state.
      - throwaway1777 3y ago
        That didn’t answer the question
        loeg 3y ago
        I was responding to this aside, not the question: > whether they're completely treating federal roads separately or using it for the total, etc The tax does not distinguish types of road, much like a gas tax does not.
        kbenson 3y ago
        That sounds like it's equating Utah's taxing to total U.S. road funding, to which I say both "duh" about the result and "that can't be all that's going on in the report if it's about Utah, so there must be some disconnect in what we're talking about." The context we were in is Utah gas taxes and how much it affects road funding that Utah does. Were you referring to something different? I would assume that Utah gas taxes, if they are intended to fund road work, would go towards state roads in Utah (but that's just an assumption, which is why I was interested in the source).
  - Robotbeat 3y ago
    Indeed, gas taxes act as a sort of carbon tax, so taxing EVs to compensate is like getting rid of a carbon tax.
    - loeg 3y ago
      That isn't the stated purpose of most gas taxes, though. (The stated purpose is funding roads programs.) Intuitively, EVs still need to use and pay for road use. It's probably better for legislatures to explicitly pass carbon taxes (or similar things like cap-and-trade programs).
      - Robotbeat 3y ago
        No, gas taxes were always seen as part of conservation measures as well, especially since the 1970s. I see this claim all the time that gas taxes are purely a use tax, and that hasn’t been true for about half a century or longer, and just about everyone knows this, so I consider that kind of claim to be dishonest. And yes, it’s less efficient than a carbon tax, but fundamentally you cannot deny the net effect of getting rid of the conservation aspect of gas taxes BEFORE passing a compensating carbon tax would have the effect of basically eliminating a carbon tax. In other words, let’s talk about adding compensatory EV fees AFTER passing a carbon tax. Sounds fair and certainly better for climate.
parl_match 3y ago
> Utah views EV drivers as tax evaders because they don't buy gas That's because they kind of are. Road taxes are often use-based, where gasoline is the way they extract "use" taxes. EVs also wear roads more than gas cars do, on average, because of their higher weight. And it's not linear wear per pound, either. This is going to require a significant shift about how states and cities think about their road maintenance budgets and the taxes required to sustain them. A lot of states are going to, predictably, get this wrong.
- jbritton 3y ago
  I figure it’s semi trucks that do almost all the road damage. We could just tax the trucks, but that would just get passed along in higher prices for everything. So might as well pay for road repair out of the general fund than have special taxes.
  - Kye 3y ago
    Diesel is already taxed at a higher rate than gasoline.
    - KennyBlanken 3y ago
      A diesel truck that has three times the pressure on the road and easily ten to fifteen times the total weight, while getting about 1/3rd the gas mileage of the average US passenger vehicle. Given the (unsupported) claim that a EV wears the road significantly more than a gasoline car for what amounts to shouldn't we expect that a vehicle exerting three times the pressure on the road should pay more per mile than 'just' 3x what you and I do in our gas passenger cars?
      - Kon-Peki 3y ago
        > Given the (unsupported) claim that a EV wears the road significantly more than a gasoline car Wear on the road is a function of weight. It’s really simple and uncontroversial. An EV generally weighs more than an ICE of equivalent size. Hopefully, the federal push to install tons of charging stations will usher in useful EVs with smaller batteries, lowering weight.
loeg 3y ago
> pay an exorbitant registration fee (hundreds more than other vehicles) By which you mean $130 (equating to ~13,000 miles driven under the 1 cent-per-mile pricing)? https://roadusagecharge.utah.gov/faq.php#fees https://roadusagecharge.utah.gov/faq.php#fees I agree it should be easier and more privacy-preserving to measure real usage (e.g., an odometer read once a year or something like that).
- mholt 3y ago
  No, mine was over $340. The fee for my Civic was ~$100.
  - greesil 3y ago
    Try living in California. My $42K EV was closer to $600 for the registration.
    - 13of40 3y ago
      Seattle suburbs here. I pay about $500 a year to register my (gas) car so someday I can ride the train they broke ground on 25 years ago.
      - loeg 3y ago
        My gas car registration fees in Seattle are $160/year total. Of that either $80 or $120 is flat by weight and the remainder scales by value. If your fees are $500/year, your vehicle is extremely heavy, expensive, or both.
        13of40 3y ago
        It's a newish BMW SUV, so both.
        KennyBlanken 3y ago
        Sounds to me like the system is working exactly as it should.
monksy 3y ago
It's amazing how nosey Utah is. They want to scan your DL to find out who's buying alcohol, they're demanding id based age verification for watching porn online, and apparently they want to enforce monitoring on your phone+car.
- rgmerk 3y ago
  Amazing? Maybe. Surprising? Hardly.
- throwaway742 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - frankfrankfrank 3y ago
    [flagged]
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- sidewndr46 3y ago
  As an outsider my impression of Utah it is just a state run by a religious niche group.
  - AnimalMuppet 3y ago
    You're not wrong. The state itself is at least half Mormon. When you get out of Salt Lake and Ogden, it's a lot more. But there's a lot of scenery and skiing and outdoors things to do. There's a lot of things right with the state. (Start with cities that are safer than expected for their size. Mormons have something to do with that, too.) But in terms of how the state is run... yeah, you're not wrong.
ekianjo 3y ago
Taxes on EV are just starting. A lot of taxes come from gas in the first place and once the market for EV is ripe the goverment will unleash the tax whip on the EV category before you know it. It is inevitable.
- Robotbeat 3y ago
  Taxes on EVs will be at a maximum just before around 20% if the market is EV, as they’re seen as a way to soak/punish people who are weird (ie early adopters). Once people actually see how disproportionate the fees are and if significant numbers of voters have to pay them, support will drop.
  - ekianjo 3y ago
    They will forbid combustion engines anyway so you wont have a choice
bpbp-mango 3y ago
Why do you think a few hundred dollars is "exorbitant"?
- Robotbeat 3y ago
  Greater than the equivalent state gas tax.
Analemma_ 3y ago
WA state is also ridiculous about this: I can understand a road usage tax to replace the gas tax we're not paying, but they also charge an additional fee on top of that for a state fund to add more EV charging stations, even though logically it should be ICE drivers who are paying this to help incentivize the transition! People who already bought EVs clearly aren't concerned with the number of charging stations which exist now.
- frankfrankfrank 3y ago
  It strikes me just how detached and ignorant your perspective is, largely not because it bothers me that people like you exist, but how it seems practically impossible for such detached and decadent perspectives to proliferate without collapse being imminent. So you, member of the spoiled rotten, pilfering upper strata, parasitizing the larger society while at the same time degenerating it, want the regular people you are living off in decadence, to also pay not just current rates, but even higher rates so you can see your utopian, egotist, narcissistic vision come to fruition? You want people who can’t afford the luxury of EVs and who are already being destroyed and pillaged by the likes of your strata, to on top of that abuse, also pay more? Do you want them to also just eat cake? Or perhaps maybe they should also just try being billionaires? Just stop being poor, people. Right? It’s unfortunate that humans seem to have made essentially zero progress in preventing what has been captured in numerous stories. Possibly the most relevant one being that Hubris is struck down by Nemesis; the origins of those two words themselves, something most people do not even realize. If you ever have the chance, there is an excellent statue of Hubris in the Louvre. It is a bit hidden and tucked away, which makes it all the more prescient. Note when it was created.
  - 542354234235 3y ago
    >Do you want them to also just eat cake? Or perhaps maybe they should also just try being billionaires? Just stop being poor, people. Right? I think billionaires are buying private planes, not EVs. The people buying EVs for their daily transportation several orders of magnitude closer to being homeless than they are to being billionaires.
  - 3y ago
irrational 3y ago
It’s not just Utah. Oregon has been talking for the better part of a decade about the best way to have EV owners help pay for road maintenance. Both the things you mention are things they have tried in large scale tests. I imagine most states are trying to figure out the same thing and coming up with solutions similar to Utah (or, more likely, Utah got the ideas from other states).
xur17 3y ago
It's shocking to me that it requires an OBD device and a surveillance app. Can't they just check your odometer when you go to update your registration?
- mholt 3y ago
  That would require trusting the public. But no, we are required to trust the government and some sketchy third parties I've never heard of.
  - cudgy 3y ago
    State probably gets a kickback from the third parties for the information they get about the drivers.
- hnick 3y ago
  They do that in AU / VIC for the EV road use tax, you have to upload a photo. I don't see the problem, just make it illegal to lie and fine the ones you catch.
  - namibj 3y ago
    Take the car from the ones you catch.
alkonaut 3y ago
Eventually of course road taxes need to be extracted from something other than fuel. How soon that switch is made just depends on how long you want gas car drivers to subsidize the roads for EV drivers. I think most would agree that the time to stop that subsidizing is "not yet". Why you would need to track how much a vehicle is driven I don't understand though. Unless you want to measure how far it's driven within some geographical area (such as a state) and can't merely charge for the total distance driven, but that seems unnecessarily complex, given that a car will only be registered in one region and it should balance out across state borders. So at the anual/biannual mandatory inspections (which make a lot more sense to add if they aren't already mandatory, than any tracking!) just check the distance driven and charge road tax accordingly. I pay around $800/year for road tax for my car. And $8/gallon for the fuel. But I do get great roads for it.
- francisofascii 3y ago
  > Eventually of course road taxes need to be extracted from something other than fuel. If we get to a point where fuel consumption is so low that it stops generating significant tax revenue, then that is a great problem to have.
  - loeg 3y ago
    There's a gulf between "fuel tax drops 50% leading to budget shortfalls" and "drops 99% to insignificant revenue" and states still need to pay for roads during that window.
nonethewiser 3y ago
I don't agree with the language you used but EV drivers are not paying the taxes that were levied to maintain roads. And obviously the EV's use the roads.

by mholt 3y ago

throwaway1777 3y ago

That actually kinda makes sense. EVs should pay their share to use the roads too.

loeg 3y ago
(Gas taxes are a relatively small fraction of roads funding, for what it's worth.)
- kbenson 3y ago
  I'd be interested in seeing the numbers, and how they slice it up (whether they're completely treating federal roads separately or using it for the total, etc), as at $0.364 per gallon in Utah, it seems like it results in a large amount to put towards funding something, so it would be interesting to track where it's going.
  - loeg 3y ago
    Utah’s cent per mile program treats all roads the same, including roads outside of the state.
    - throwaway1777 3y ago
      That didn’t answer the question
      - loeg 3y ago
        I was responding to this aside, not the question: > whether they're completely treating federal roads separately or using it for the total, etc The tax does not distinguish types of road, much like a gas tax does not.
        kbenson 3y ago
        That sounds like it's equating Utah's taxing to total U.S. road funding, to which I say both "duh" about the result and "that can't be all that's going on in the report if it's about Utah, so there must be some disconnect in what we're talking about." The context we were in is Utah gas taxes and how much it affects road funding that Utah does. Were you referring to something different? I would assume that Utah gas taxes, if they are intended to fund road work, would go towards state roads in Utah (but that's just an assumption, which is why I was interested in the source).
- Robotbeat 3y ago
  Indeed, gas taxes act as a sort of carbon tax, so taxing EVs to compensate is like getting rid of a carbon tax.
  - loeg 3y ago
    That isn't the stated purpose of most gas taxes, though. (The stated purpose is funding roads programs.) Intuitively, EVs still need to use and pay for road use. It's probably better for legislatures to explicitly pass carbon taxes (or similar things like cap-and-trade programs).
    - Robotbeat 3y ago
      No, gas taxes were always seen as part of conservation measures as well, especially since the 1970s. I see this claim all the time that gas taxes are purely a use tax, and that hasn’t been true for about half a century or longer, and just about everyone knows this, so I consider that kind of claim to be dishonest. And yes, it’s less efficient than a carbon tax, but fundamentally you cannot deny the net effect of getting rid of the conservation aspect of gas taxes BEFORE passing a compensating carbon tax would have the effect of basically eliminating a carbon tax. In other words, let’s talk about adding compensatory EV fees AFTER passing a carbon tax. Sounds fair and certainly better for climate.

parl_match 3y ago

> Utah views EV drivers as tax evaders because they don't buy gas That's because they kind of are. Road taxes are often use-based, where gasoline is the way they extract "use" taxes. EVs also wear roads more than gas cars do, on average, because of their higher weight. And it's not linear wear per pound, either. This is going to require a significant shift about how states and cities think about their road maintenance budgets and the taxes required to sustain them. A lot of states are going to, predictably, get this wrong.

jbritton 3y ago
I figure it’s semi trucks that do almost all the road damage. We could just tax the trucks, but that would just get passed along in higher prices for everything. So might as well pay for road repair out of the general fund than have special taxes.
- Kye 3y ago
  Diesel is already taxed at a higher rate than gasoline.
  - KennyBlanken 3y ago
    A diesel truck that has three times the pressure on the road and easily ten to fifteen times the total weight, while getting about 1/3rd the gas mileage of the average US passenger vehicle. Given the (unsupported) claim that a EV wears the road significantly more than a gasoline car for what amounts to shouldn't we expect that a vehicle exerting three times the pressure on the road should pay more per mile than 'just' 3x what you and I do in our gas passenger cars?
    - Kon-Peki 3y ago
      > Given the (unsupported) claim that a EV wears the road significantly more than a gasoline car Wear on the road is a function of weight. It’s really simple and uncontroversial. An EV generally weighs more than an ICE of equivalent size. Hopefully, the federal push to install tons of charging stations will usher in useful EVs with smaller batteries, lowering weight.

loeg 3y ago

> pay an exorbitant registration fee (hundreds more than other vehicles) By which you mean $130 (equating to ~13,000 miles driven under the 1 cent-per-mile pricing)? https://roadusagecharge.utah.gov/faq.php#fees https://roadusagecharge.utah.gov/faq.php#fees I agree it should be easier and more privacy-preserving to measure real usage (e.g., an odometer read once a year or something like that).

mholt 3y ago
No, mine was over $340. The fee for my Civic was ~$100.
- greesil 3y ago
  Try living in California. My $42K EV was closer to $600 for the registration.
  - 13of40 3y ago
    Seattle suburbs here. I pay about $500 a year to register my (gas) car so someday I can ride the train they broke ground on 25 years ago.
    - loeg 3y ago
      My gas car registration fees in Seattle are $160/year total. Of that either $80 or $120 is flat by weight and the remainder scales by value. If your fees are $500/year, your vehicle is extremely heavy, expensive, or both.
      - 13of40 3y ago
        It's a newish BMW SUV, so both.
        KennyBlanken 3y ago
        Sounds to me like the system is working exactly as it should.

monksy 3y ago

It's amazing how nosey Utah is. They want to scan your DL to find out who's buying alcohol, they're demanding id based age verification for watching porn online, and apparently they want to enforce monitoring on your phone+car.

rgmerk 3y ago
Amazing? Maybe. Surprising? Hardly.
throwaway742 3y ago
[flagged]
- frankfrankfrank 3y ago
  [flagged]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
sidewndr46 3y ago
As an outsider my impression of Utah it is just a state run by a religious niche group.
- AnimalMuppet 3y ago
  You're not wrong. The state itself is at least half Mormon. When you get out of Salt Lake and Ogden, it's a lot more. But there's a lot of scenery and skiing and outdoors things to do. There's a lot of things right with the state. (Start with cities that are safer than expected for their size. Mormons have something to do with that, too.) But in terms of how the state is run... yeah, you're not wrong.

ekianjo 3y ago

Taxes on EV are just starting. A lot of taxes come from gas in the first place and once the market for EV is ripe the goverment will unleash the tax whip on the EV category before you know it. It is inevitable.

Robotbeat 3y ago
Taxes on EVs will be at a maximum just before around 20% if the market is EV, as they’re seen as a way to soak/punish people who are weird (ie early adopters). Once people actually see how disproportionate the fees are and if significant numbers of voters have to pay them, support will drop.
- ekianjo 3y ago
  They will forbid combustion engines anyway so you wont have a choice

bpbp-mango 3y ago

Why do you think a few hundred dollars is "exorbitant"?

Robotbeat 3y ago
Greater than the equivalent state gas tax.

Analemma_ 3y ago

WA state is also ridiculous about this: I can understand a road usage tax to replace the gas tax we're not paying, but they also charge an additional fee on top of that for a state fund to add more EV charging stations, even though logically it should be ICE drivers who are paying this to help incentivize the transition! People who already bought EVs clearly aren't concerned with the number of charging stations which exist now.

frankfrankfrank 3y ago
It strikes me just how detached and ignorant your perspective is, largely not because it bothers me that people like you exist, but how it seems practically impossible for such detached and decadent perspectives to proliferate without collapse being imminent. So you, member of the spoiled rotten, pilfering upper strata, parasitizing the larger society while at the same time degenerating it, want the regular people you are living off in decadence, to also pay not just current rates, but even higher rates so you can see your utopian, egotist, narcissistic vision come to fruition? You want people who can’t afford the luxury of EVs and who are already being destroyed and pillaged by the likes of your strata, to on top of that abuse, also pay more? Do you want them to also just eat cake? Or perhaps maybe they should also just try being billionaires? Just stop being poor, people. Right? It’s unfortunate that humans seem to have made essentially zero progress in preventing what has been captured in numerous stories. Possibly the most relevant one being that Hubris is struck down by Nemesis; the origins of those two words themselves, something most people do not even realize. If you ever have the chance, there is an excellent statue of Hubris in the Louvre. It is a bit hidden and tucked away, which makes it all the more prescient. Note when it was created.
- 542354234235 3y ago
  >Do you want them to also just eat cake? Or perhaps maybe they should also just try being billionaires? Just stop being poor, people. Right? I think billionaires are buying private planes, not EVs. The people buying EVs for their daily transportation several orders of magnitude closer to being homeless than they are to being billionaires.
- 3y ago

irrational 3y ago

It’s not just Utah. Oregon has been talking for the better part of a decade about the best way to have EV owners help pay for road maintenance. Both the things you mention are things they have tried in large scale tests. I imagine most states are trying to figure out the same thing and coming up with solutions similar to Utah (or, more likely, Utah got the ideas from other states).

xur17 3y ago

It's shocking to me that it requires an OBD device and a surveillance app. Can't they just check your odometer when you go to update your registration?

mholt 3y ago
That would require trusting the public. But no, we are required to trust the government and some sketchy third parties I've never heard of.
- cudgy 3y ago
  State probably gets a kickback from the third parties for the information they get about the drivers.
hnick 3y ago
They do that in AU / VIC for the EV road use tax, you have to upload a photo. I don't see the problem, just make it illegal to lie and fine the ones you catch.
- namibj 3y ago
  Take the car from the ones you catch.

alkonaut 3y ago

Eventually of course road taxes need to be extracted from something other than fuel. How soon that switch is made just depends on how long you want gas car drivers to subsidize the roads for EV drivers. I think most would agree that the time to stop that subsidizing is "not yet". Why you would need to track how much a vehicle is driven I don't understand though. Unless you want to measure how far it's driven within some geographical area (such as a state) and can't merely charge for the total distance driven, but that seems unnecessarily complex, given that a car will only be registered in one region and it should balance out across state borders. So at the anual/biannual mandatory inspections (which make a lot more sense to add if they aren't already mandatory, than any tracking!) just check the distance driven and charge road tax accordingly. I pay around $800/year for road tax for my car. And $8/gallon for the fuel. But I do get great roads for it.

francisofascii 3y ago
> Eventually of course road taxes need to be extracted from something other than fuel. If we get to a point where fuel consumption is so low that it stops generating significant tax revenue, then that is a great problem to have.
- loeg 3y ago
  There's a gulf between "fuel tax drops 50% leading to budget shortfalls" and "drops 99% to insignificant revenue" and states still need to pay for roads during that window.

nonethewiser 3y ago

I don't agree with the language you used but EV drivers are not paying the taxes that were levied to maintain roads. And obviously the EV's use the roads.