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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

#191

Post by beezle »

recursive wrote: post #24
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 read somewhere that road damage caused by vehicles is not linear with weight. Heavy vehicles do much more damage. I can't cite a source, but I recall an exponent between 3 and 4 on the leading term. With that in mind, everything but heavy freight is basically negligible. And then it's generally for businesses where privacy isn't so much of an issue.

On an individual level perhaps so but probably not when you consider the number of cars vs the number of heavy transports.

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

#192

Post by FpUser »

URSpider94 wrote: post #180
perlgeek wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you pay for maintenance from the general budget, you are allowing shipping companies (for example) to externalize cost that they incur on society. This is generally a bad thing, but very concretely it led to road traffic growing much faster than rail traffic (or canal ship traffic) even in countries with a very dense rail network.

This, and it also subsidizes people’s decisions to live far away from where they work and commute by car every day. There was a time when I think that would have been seen as a public good, and thus people were ok with that. Now is not that time. Comparing this with free public education, by not charging user fees to attend school, we are subsidizing (a) having children, and (b) educating them at the expense of the c…

>"This, and it also subsidizes people’s decisions to live far away from where they work and commute by car every day."

Hence greatly increasing chances of finding better or any employment and at least partially reducing pressure employers can come up with.

  ...
  You load sixteen tons, what do you get?
  Another day older and deeper in debt
  Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
  I owe my soul to the company store 
  ...

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

#193

Post by benhurmarcel »

Someone wrote: post #184
davidivadavid wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a European, 13.1 l/100 km seems... insane. What's happening here?

13.1 includes buses and trucks. Actual for passenger vehicles is 10.6. https://www.bitre.gov.au/sites/default/files/is_091.pdf : “The average rate of fuel consumption across all Australian vehicles in 2016 was 13.1 l/100km. However, this includes buses and trucks which are overwhelmingly used for business purposes. Given that this study is focused on the vehicle costs of Australian households (and not businesses), Fi…

That's still surprisingly high.

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

#194

Post by lutorm »

perlgeek wrote: post #121
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…

> That said - I think the only real answer here is a more thorough overhaul of how you tax road usage. Perhaps it's time to ditch the fuel excise tax entirely, and tax all drivers based on (vehicle weight * kms driven * some constant). If you want to tax fairly based on road wear, you have to tax by axle weight to the 4th power * distance driven. That said, there's a pretty simple solution that doesn't send the same…

You could make all vehicles pay road usage tax, keep charging fuel tax and use the latter to subsidize fuel efficient vehicles. It doesn't solve the question of how to make that palatable to the majority of people who can't afford an EV, though, even with subsidies.

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

#195

Post by octodog »

josephcsible wrote: post #106
jdhn wrote: post #9

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?

My opinion: The transition from ICE vehicles to EVs is a very large net benefit to society, so during this period when new ICE vehicles are still legal, we should be giving EVs special ("unfair") benefits to encourage people to switch. If this new tax results in people choosing to buy an ICE vehicle who would have bought an EV without it, that's a very bad outcome. As for the loss of revenue from the gas tax, I think…

Implementing the tax now makes sense because it brings ICE and EV into alignment now, while usage is relatively low, rather than suddenly introducing a tax down the proverbial road.

To incentive switching the government has other policy tools at their disposal, such as a one-off subsidy at purchase time.

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

#196

Post by Someone »

marta_morena_28 wrote: post #179
Someone wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100 kg bicycle (including rider), 0.00000625 units of damage. So, getting people out of their cars onto bicycles cuts road maintenance cost. Because of that, building bike lanes/paths can be cheaper than not building them. (And 50 tonne trucks are very rare on most city roads, I hope)

Confirmation bias to the fourth power. A person just told you that an average truck of which you see plenty on the roads, does a couple thousand times the damage of a car and your response is: "Let's get all the cars of the road because a bicycle does no damage at all compared to cars"

Who says all? I’m just pointing out that there can be economic incentives for improving bicycle infrastructure.

That isn’t an original idea. See for example https://www.vabike.org/vehicle-weight-and-road-damage/ (2009)

Also, if in Google “50 ton 5-axle truck” I get trucks that I rarely see on roads in Europe. Reading https://www.jpisla.es/resources/Download+JPIsla+20130106+Pes..., that’s because t most countries don’t allow them on roads.

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

#197

Post by loufe »

moralsupply wrote: post #108
BlueTemplar wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because inflation is considered to be bad (not sure whether it's worse than the tax system though), but more importantly, an inflation tax is regressive in that richer people can afford to store their wealth in things that do not inflate away (and even deflate due to this kind of speculation). Also, taxes are probably a smarter way to deal with negative externalities than regulation.

Inflation is taxation on your savings. It's effectively the same thing as any other tax. Laws and regulations are the reason as to why taxes exist in the first place. The government holds the monopoly of force, therefore it can issue any laws and regulations it wants. Because of that it can have a monopoly on the currency and tax its people.

You're completely missing his point. It's not the exact same thing. If I made a million a year as a company owner or shareholder (ignoring tax evasion schemes) I would receive a salary or dividends (ignoring choosing to hold it alone) then reinvest that money into other assets. That can be effectively an instant transfer. I don't lose any money because my capital is in interest-adjusting money earning places, rather than sitting in accont become ever less valuable. The system has some merits but in the end it's not a tax on the rich (who would minimize cash savings) or the poor (who, unfortunately, by definition have no capability to amass any) but instead on the middle class.

I'd argue that's far, far less fair than standard progressive income taxes.

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

#198

Post by lmilcin »

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 you misunderstand what the road tax (or any other tax) is for.

There are three main reasons for a tax to exist:

1. To bring revenue

2. To create incentive

3. Social justice (or illusion of it)

Revenue from a specific tax is almost never used for a specific purpose. All revenue goes into a large bin from which the government takes to finance everything.

Revenue from fuel/road tax is not used to finance building roads. Infrastructure is financed from budget or by private companies who then can impose tolls on road users.

Fuel tax (besides obvious goal of creating revenue) is there to create incentive to drive less and to drive more efficiently (using less fuel). This is not to preserve roads but rather to preserve capacity and environment.

I can only assume that tax on electric vehicles is as a response to increasing use of EVs. Initially, EVs were exempted from taxes to create incentive to use them more. Now that it is pretty clear EVs took off and will be widespread no matter what, some countries start to remove those exemptions to ensure continuing revenue stream.

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

#199

Post by Guthur »

Zenbit_UX wrote: post #168
tinus_hn wrote: post #152

So is Australia that country that actually uses the road tax to pay for roads?

No but they are that country that was on fire this year due to climate change... How quickly they've forgotten.

Nope, you don't know what you're talking about.

Australia has terrible land management. Before urban settlement the Aboringal population would carry out continual burn and migrate behaviour, keeping the bush leaf clutter far more in check and drastically reducing the amount of fuel available.

Austalia has always burned long before the industrial revolution and it can't burn without fuel.

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

#200

Post by oblio »

ElKrist wrote: post #44
davidivadavid wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a European, 13.1 l/100 km seems... insane. What's happening here?

I've lived both in France and Australia. Australians love 4 wheels drive and bigger cars. In some cases it's justified for obvious reasons: rough environments with less infrastructure (bush, outback..). In other cases it is for softer reasons: a big camping culture, having a big car being a social status, towing your boat/jet ski etc. Also a few other points to consider: _ Australia enjoyed economic growth for a long…

> towing your boat/jet ski etc.

A 180-200 BHP sedan can tow a trailer quite easily. You don't need a big SUV for that.

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