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Victoria follows South Australia and imposes electric car road tax

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Re: Victoria follows South Australia and imposes electric car road tax

#151

Post by alkonaut »

guerby wrote: post #118

Tax on using roads make sense as road maintenance costs money that has to come from somewhere. But climate change is also a question of timing and transition, EV will be taxed at some point what about timing and message: - do we want to replace fossil fuel for transportation? - if so how fast do we want to do it? Taxing EV right now might not be the best idea... EV is also less imports, less pollution (including less…

The correct thing might be to add the road tax early as to not need to change the TCO calculation later, when people already own the vehicles.

To keep encouraging EV purchases, instead offset the road tax by subsidies for new cars. That brings more cars into the pool.

The subsidies can be more or less than the road tax, the point is that the subsidies are trivial to remove later, but a tax is harder and more unfair to those who already purchased a car assuming a specific cost of ownership.

Re: Victoria follows South Australia and imposes electric car road tax

#153

Post by dalbasal »

riversflow wrote: post #128
ip26 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the simplest arguments against it to me is basically to look at the landscape. For example, in the US, ballpark 1% of cars are electric. Meanwhile, the flat federal fuel tax is not indexed to inflation & hasn't been increased in almost thirty years. Yet everyone is in this panic about how EVs are going to cause a huge revenue shortfall!? I'm not opposed to EVs paying their share, but something is rotten in Den…

2 things. First, pretty sure it’s been discussed here previously(edit: and is down thread), but I believe the wear on the road is like the 4th power of the weight.[1] here’s a chart describing it. with that considered, I don’t think it makes sense to even really charge passenger vehicles in the US, when we have huge fleets of 80k pound big rigs on the road(and the limit is uncapped with overweight permits)—charge the…

Who says you should tax directly based on wear anyway? The bigger scarcity is often traffic in any case. Some roads have higher costs than others. etc.

Maybe we want to lower transport costs by charging trucks less. Maybe we want to encourage electric car viability by charging them less. I mean, tax policies have outcomes. Doesn't it make sense to target outcomes we want?

Obviously the road needs to be paid for and fuel taxes won't work if people don't buy fuel. That said, I think it's inevitable that whatever comes next is a policy... encourage some stuff, discourage other stuff, benefit certain people/sectors and such. ATM, encouraging electric vehicle adoption with a fuel tax exemption doesn't seem crazy.

It does create a regressive dynamic, where new electrics are subsidized by legacy ICE. By the time that represents more than a rounding error the fuel tax deficit will be big enough that the tax system will be changing anyway.

A better approach is probably a time-of-purchase tax. =

Re: Victoria follows South Australia and imposes electric car road tax

#154

Post by robocat »

jeffbee wrote: post #73
horsawlarway wrote: post #6

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…

Your analysis is fine but the first step, or a concurrent step, needs to be tripling that motor fuel tax. That would only just barely bring it up to the necessary level of carbon taxation, nevermind the roads.

Facts:

* One litre of petrol creates 2.3kg of CO².

* A going market price for an offset is $25-50 per metric ton

So the tax per litre to offset the CO² is 6 to 12 cents.

Re: Victoria follows South Australia and imposes electric car road tax

#155

Post by Dylan16807 »

tomp wrote: post #109
Zigurd wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds "fair" but amounts to a massive subsidy of diesel powered heavy trucking. TBF, it is possible to build roads that trucks do not quickly destroy, and maybe the expense of doing that makes sense in some cases. Everything except heavy trucking would pay much less to maintain roads, but for trucks wearing them out. While you suggest a tax based on vehicle weight, which might also seem "fair," that still does…

So? You need trucks to deliver stuff (food etc) if you want to live in a city. The correct way of looking at this isn’t by asking “what’s fair” but instead “what we want to incentivise”. People moving out of cities? Ramp up city property taxes. People moving into cities (more efficient)? Subsidise transport of goods. More green energy? Tax CO2 / fuel, subsidise (clean) electricity. Less trucks, more railways? Tax tru…

There are different ways to ship by truck. Maybe you want to encourage more axles and a slightly lighter max load, which could easily drop the damage by a factor of 10.

Re: Victoria follows South Australia and imposes electric car road tax

#156

Post by basicneo »

gambiting wrote: post #75
horsawlarway wrote: post #6

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…

"Australian cars right now avg about 13.1 litres per 100km" Wait, that can't be true. That's an insane number if correct. Here in EU a car that averages 7-8L/100km is considered to have poor fuel economy. My previous car was a Mercedes AMG that over 4 years averaged 12L/100km and that was considered absolutely abysmal by everyone, people were wondering how I can afford the fuel for it. And you're telling me that the…

https://www.caradvice.com.au/658919/australia-could-become-a... might explain some of it.

Re: Victoria follows South Australia and imposes electric car road tax

#157

Post by markdown »

ip26 wrote: post #115
horsawlarway wrote: post #6

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…

One of the simplest arguments against it to me is basically to look at the landscape. For example, in the US, ballpark 1% of cars are electric. Meanwhile, the flat federal fuel tax is not indexed to inflation & hasn't been increased in almost thirty years. Yet everyone is in this panic about how EVs are going to cause a huge revenue shortfall!? I'm not opposed to EVs paying their share, but something is rotten in Den…

If you make it too expensive to change tires, people will drive for much longer with worn out tires, risking lives.

Re: Victoria follows South Australia and imposes electric car road tax

#158

Post by [deleted] »

ip26 wrote: post #115
horsawlarway wrote: post #6

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…

One of the simplest arguments against it to me is basically to look at the landscape. For example, in the US, ballpark 1% of cars are electric. Meanwhile, the flat federal fuel tax is not indexed to inflation & hasn't been increased in almost thirty years. Yet everyone is in this panic about how EVs are going to cause a huge revenue shortfall!? I'm not opposed to EVs paying their share, but something is rotten in Den…

[deleted]

Re: Victoria follows South Australia and imposes electric car road tax

#159

Post by mulmen »

horsawlarway wrote: post #6

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…

I think use tax on infrastructure is a bad idea full stop. If you want to encourage more efficient cars or less driving do it with car tabs.

I don't need to drive my car on a road to derive value form it. In the same way that I don't have children but still benefit from schools.

Property taxes should be the source of funding for infrastructure projects.

Use taxes are regressive and result in underfunded infrastructure with the wealthy paying less and adding another barrier to the poor making ends meet.

Re: Victoria follows South Australia and imposes electric car road tax

#160

Post by javagram »

anthonygd wrote: post #147
chrismorgan wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s funny: as an Australian that has visited the USA a couple of times (and never been to Europe), I’d repeat half of your points but for America rather than Australia. Some Australians certainly have large vehicles without good cause, but that number is nowhere near as big as in America. (Notwithstanding this, my Dad and I have discussed the concept of a ban or extreme tax on owning big vehicles unless you can just…

I don't see why a large family would be an excuse. You need a large vehicle because you chose to need a large vehicle?

A large family creates many future taxpayers. The state has an interest in subsidizing or at least not discouraging the creation of large families
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