3 ms·

With the new CAFE mileage goals, tax revenue will fall as cars become more fuel efficient. Or as people buy more electric vehicles. The deal is that cars actu

by chiph 13y ago

With the new CAFE mileage goals, tax revenue will fall as cars become more fuel efficient. Or as people buy more electric vehicles. The deal is that cars actually cause very little damage to the roads. Trucks are the real cause of road damage -- up to 80,000 pounds spread over five axles. Compare that to 4,000 pounds over two axles for a car (or 5-6k pounds for a loaded pickup or SUV) -- the per-axle weight is much higher for a truck. The trucking lobby is very powerful in Washington, and will resist any effort to increase the diesel motor-fuels tax. They have a powerful argument in their favor: The majority of food in America is delivered by truck. Raise the tax, raise the cost of food. But even outside of that, there's a simple way to get about a 20% increase in funds for repairing the roads & bridges, and that's to stop the diversion of funds out of the highway trust fund into the general fund. The tax money intended to go to build & maintain our crumbling transportation infrastructure, is instead being fed into the sausage factory where it gets turned into pork.

PeterisP 13y ago
The valid argument for not taxing a flat rate ($xxx per car per year) is that it unfairly penalizes those who use it very little. For personal vehicles that makes sense, so their 'costs' are mostly paid by the gas excise; but for commercial trucks you can just tax them directly - for example, here local semi-trailers pay ~$350 annual vehicle tax; does USA have something like this? The food argument is bullshit, of course, but probably effective because it sounds nice. The truck fuel cost is a very tiny part of the actual food cost - taxes on farming fuel would impact food, but not that. Of course, extra taxes always create inflation; but fuel tax is probably the one most evenly spread across everything, as it affects burger prices just the same as Barbie prices.
- chiph 13y ago
  The federal diesel motor fuels tax is 28¢ per gallon. The states will have their own tax as well. Texas imposes a 20¢ per gallon tax. Connecticut's is 54.9¢. There's also a tax on the vehicle itself. I want to say that it's in the $500 per year range, depending on it's GVWR and the state.
msandford 13y ago
Worse, road wear goes up with the fourth power of vehicle weight. http://thatmansscope.blogspot.com/2009/10/trucks-and-fourth-power-rule.html http://thatmansscope.blogspot.com/2009/10/trucks-and-fourth-... Looking at it that way it becomes clear that bikes and cars do effectively zero road wear and that trucks effectively cause all road wear. As a result there should be "commercial" diesel for big trucks and non-commercial diesel for cars, pickups, etc. You can use dye the same way they do with farm diesel which is untaxed. And then charge about an extra dollar per gallon of tax on the commercial diesel which might roughly offset the actual wear these vehicles cause. What that will do is shift a lot of cargo transport from truck to rail (which wouldn't pay the commercial diesel tax) and which is more fuel efficient anyhow. And if the train companies wanted to they could easily run their trains on natural gas; what's a single extra fuel car when you're already pulling 100 cars worth of cargo? I don't know how you'd get legislation like that passed but it would solve a lot of problems by going after the source of said problems. I'd like to see real problem solving, not can-kicking.
Zak 13y ago
States and the Federal government both charge heavy vehicle use taxes for heavy commercial vehicles in addition to the fuel taxes. While it's likely these taxes are disproportionately low relative to the wear such vehicles cause, they do exist.

by chiph 13y ago

PeterisP 13y ago

The valid argument for not taxing a flat rate ($xxx per car per year) is that it unfairly penalizes those who use it very little. For personal vehicles that makes sense, so their 'costs' are mostly paid by the gas excise; but for commercial trucks you can just tax them directly - for example, here local semi-trailers pay ~$350 annual vehicle tax; does USA have something like this? The food argument is bullshit, of course, but probably effective because it sounds nice. The truck fuel cost is a very tiny part of the actual food cost - taxes on farming fuel would impact food, but not that. Of course, extra taxes always create inflation; but fuel tax is probably the one most evenly spread across everything, as it affects burger prices just the same as Barbie prices.

chiph 13y ago
The federal diesel motor fuels tax is 28¢ per gallon. The states will have their own tax as well. Texas imposes a 20¢ per gallon tax. Connecticut's is 54.9¢. There's also a tax on the vehicle itself. I want to say that it's in the $500 per year range, depending on it's GVWR and the state.

msandford 13y ago

Worse, road wear goes up with the fourth power of vehicle weight. http://thatmansscope.blogspot.com/2009/10/trucks-and-fourth-power-rule.html http://thatmansscope.blogspot.com/2009/10/trucks-and-fourth-... Looking at it that way it becomes clear that bikes and cars do effectively zero road wear and that trucks effectively cause all road wear. As a result there should be "commercial" diesel for big trucks and non-commercial diesel for cars, pickups, etc. You can use dye the same way they do with farm diesel which is untaxed. And then charge about an extra dollar per gallon of tax on the commercial diesel which might roughly offset the actual wear these vehicles cause. What that will do is shift a lot of cargo transport from truck to rail (which wouldn't pay the commercial diesel tax) and which is more fuel efficient anyhow. And if the train companies wanted to they could easily run their trains on natural gas; what's a single extra fuel car when you're already pulling 100 cars worth of cargo? I don't know how you'd get legislation like that passed but it would solve a lot of problems by going after the source of said problems. I'd like to see real problem solving, not can-kicking.

Zak 13y ago

States and the Federal government both charge heavy vehicle use taxes for heavy commercial vehicles in addition to the fuel taxes. While it's likely these taxes are disproportionately low relative to the wear such vehicles cause, they do exist.