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Gas is already taxed.
by tehlike 2y ago
Gas is already taxed.
- aaomidi 2y agoWell. Yes but gas tax also goes for road maintenance which EVs don’t pay. Some states have increased the registration fees for EVs to counter this.
- seanmcdirmid 2y agoAlmost all states with significant EV adoption have a special charge for EVs each year. What sucks is that it isn’t based on how much you drive, so if you aren’t using your EV to commute, you get charged just as much as someone using it all day for ride sharing.
- ImJamal 2y agoCharging based on usage would require you to provide your mileage to the government, a tracker in your car, or some other privacy destroying method. I guess the government could just ask for your mileage and take your word for it, but that isn't reliable.
- aaomidi 2y agoCar inspections that happen in most states do take count of your mileage fwiw I believe. However I also don't think charging based on "usage" makes sense here. Due to the jobs some people have, you may need to just drive a ton more and roads will need to be maintained either way however much you drive.
- seanmcdirmid 2y agoIt’s coming eventually, once enough of the cars are EVs, flat fees aren’t going to be very viable if they don’t want people to game them. It’s not hard to read an odometer, it is hard to say where those miles were accumulated f you want to be really fare and get tax revenue to the state/place you were driving in.
- derwiki 2y agoIn rural Ohio, the Amish use the roads for their buggies, but don’t pay tax. Wonder if they have registration fees for their buggies? I’ve never seen one with plates.
- acdha 2y agoThe gas taxes haven’t kept pace with inflation, though: we already have to heavily subsidize road maintenance with general fund revenue and to be an effective pollution reduction mechanism we’d have to raise it considerably, which is politically infeasible in most of the country.