21–30 of 388 posts
Road taxes should be directly proportional to how much wear a vehicle causes to the road. That ranges to effectively zero for bikes and pedestrians to dozens of times as much as a car for eighteen-wheelers.
I'm not really sure there's a good answer here. Fuel tax is 43 cents a litre. Australian cars right now avg about 13.1 litres per 100km. So you're looking at ~$5.6 per 100km for fuel tax. This tax is adding $2.5 tax per 100km for electric. Right now, EVs are absolutely creating an regressive tax situation with regards to fuel. Those who can afford to buy newer, efficient cars can usually save money on tax over those…
The vast majority of road damage is done by heavy trucks. Don't need to tax these cars at all.
I'm not really sure there's a good answer here. Fuel tax is 43 cents a litre. Australian cars right now avg about 13.1 litres per 100km. So you're looking at ~$5.6 per 100km for fuel tax. This tax is adding $2.5 tax per 100km for electric. Right now, EVs are absolutely creating an regressive tax situation with regards to fuel. Those who can afford to buy newer, efficient cars can usually save money on tax over those…
The vast majority of road damage is done by heavy trucks. Don't need to tax these cars at all.
I'm not really sure there's a good answer here. Fuel tax is 43 cents a litre. Australian cars right now avg about 13.1 litres per 100km. So you're looking at ~$5.6 per 100km for fuel tax. This tax is adding $2.5 tax per 100km for electric. Right now, EVs are absolutely creating an regressive tax situation with regards to fuel. Those who can afford to buy newer, efficient cars can usually save money on tax over those…
Road taxes should be directly proportional to how much wear a vehicle causes to the road. That ranges to effectively zero for bikes and pedestrians to dozens of times as much as a car for eighteen-wheelers.
I don't understand the opposition to this. These vehicles continue to use roads but don't pay any taxes that would help maintain roads if they were gas or diesel cars. How is that fair?
Diesel trucks are also the dirtiest vehicles on the road. It makes absolutely no sense to subsidize trucking.
Governments that have fuel excise taxes will do anything to keep their income flowing, including sabotaging EVs and public transport. This is why I would always snicker when reading Tom Friedman's harping on a fuel excise tax: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/opinion/20friedman.html Every new tax always leads to increased spending then to more tax ad nauseum.
If the government can print its own money (which you're forced to use), why does it need to make you work and pay taxes to get that money back?
The money the government "prints" has no value on itself, it needs your work to "value" its money. Taxation is nothing but the imposition the government puts on you to work "for free" so that it can print as much money as it wants and increase its own size.
Never "defend" taxes of any sort, they are unethical and essentially constitute slavery.
I'm not really sure there's a good answer here. Fuel tax is 43 cents a litre. Australian cars right now avg about 13.1 litres per 100km. So you're looking at ~$5.6 per 100km for fuel tax. This tax is adding $2.5 tax per 100km for electric. Right now, EVs are absolutely creating an regressive tax situation with regards to fuel. Those who can afford to buy newer, efficient cars can usually save money on tax over those…
Road taxes should be directly proportional to how much wear a vehicle causes to the road. That ranges to effectively zero for bikes and pedestrians to dozens of times as much as a car for eighteen-wheelers.
This sounds fair except that trucks perform an essential service. Heavy taxation of the trucking industry just raises the price of food and other necessities.
And at least for non-food goods, I tend to think usage taxes are appropriate, since consumption (usage) tends to go up as income goes up.
I'm particularly interested to see where we go as more and more shopping moves to home delivery. In theory, you save wear because each individual isn't driving to the store and back, but you're also increasing the number of large/heavy vehicles. And heavy vehicles account for basically all road damage.
I'm not really sure there's a good answer here. Fuel tax is 43 cents a litre. Australian cars right now avg about 13.1 litres per 100km. So you're looking at ~$5.6 per 100km for fuel tax. This tax is adding $2.5 tax per 100km for electric. Right now, EVs are absolutely creating an regressive tax situation with regards to fuel. Those who can afford to buy newer, efficient cars can usually save money on tax over those…
The vast majority of road damage is done by heavy trucks. Don't need to tax these cars at all.