hi everyone, i am a newbie here, this is my first post.
i was on another forum, making headway talking about evs,making my points about effiency and all, espec. since the price of gas keeps climbing.
this guy comes back talking about, how would we be paying for using the roads in the us, since that is what we pay for in part by paying for gas.
i really did not have a comeback for his statement, other then that i am already taxed to death with everything else in this country.(property, school, sales taxes!!!) you name something and i am sure we have paid tax on it in one way or another.
anyway her is this guys statement:
(if anyone has a good comeback i would like to use it)
For example, the last I knew, when farmers have their own gas and diesel pumps for fueling their tractors - technically if they put any of that fuel in a car or truck, it is not legal. Because… no road tax was paid on that fuel.
It was intended and sold for ag use.
Your and my current (no pun intended) electric bills do not include any road taxes that I know of.
They really couldn’t charge it on the whole bill either.
They’d have to find a way to come up with that money that would no longer be coming in, if the tax revenue on gas and diesel dropped off due to less consumption.
And THAT is a scary thought… turning them loose to find another way to tax! Not saying that it might not be necessary… am saying that it is scary and needs to be thought through in advance by us peons out here that bear the load.
Tax money is just that. If we didn’t pay the 18 cents/gallon federal tax, then we would end up paying the taxes some other way.
Here in California, the state tax is equal to the federal tax per gallon of gasoline. At least the last time I checked. But there exists state legislation here that allows the powers that be to reassign that fuel tax money to other needs in times of emergency. Now I’m starting to see potholes on a regular basis here in the desert, and most roads have a nice washboard to them, and yes they are asphalt.
I would just reply with: “Don’t you worry, the government will always find a way to collect on the money that they have the potential of missing out on. No need to find the way for them.”
As much as I don’t like finding ways to be retaxed for my choice to use an ev, I think the only fair way to tax those of us that won’t be buying gas is to charge us a surcharge when we register our vehicles. I know on my registration, I have a section that states what type of fuel (diesel, regular gas, e85…etc.) my vehicle uses. There should be an automatic charge for road tax added when the code for an ev comes up. It’s actually one of the few taxes I don’t mind paying after living on an unmaintained road for over a year…
IIRC California was looking at using RFID to track vehicle mileage to assign taxes to usage since non-gasoline users wouldn’t be paying taxes. Privacy right people didn’t like that too much, much less ordinary individuals either.
Usage tax could be based off of odometer reading when vehicle gets inspected or sold.
[QUOTE=jond;2031]
Usage tax could be based off of odometer reading when vehicle gets inspected or sold.[/QUOTE]
That’s how it was in South Carolina. What they could do is when you have to take your car in for inspection and they see you don’t have an emissions system on your vehicle, they could be required by the state to certify your mileage so you could pay a road usage tax on the miles you’ve driven. As much as I’d like to see more incentives for people to own electric vehicles, I have zero problem paying a tax for using the roads but I surely don’t want someone tracking where I spend my days.
In theory he is correct - in theory. In practice he is mistaken. If Congress wants to tax EV road usage they can. They can enact laws that get a tax paid in miles traveled.
For example:
They can require locked odometers on all EVs that can be read by some agency that does inspections or just communicates by satellite with the odometer.
