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Soon, Cars in Denmark Will Only Be Taxed at 100% (2017)

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Re: Soon, Cars in Denmark Will Only Be Taxed at 100% (2017)

#101

Post by khedoros1 »

ucaetano wrote: post #99
ars wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You don't want cars overall to start with. So you punish those who have/want one? Ouch, I wouldn't want to live in your world. Work the other side, make people want to not have one. Making people's life miserable is not a good way to manage your citizens. > And as wealth increases ... lower income buyers. Except that the wealthy person just buys a cheaper car. They still have a car, and you have not accomplished yo…

> So you punish those who have/want one? Ouch, I wouldn't want to live in your world. No. Cars have negative externalities to society, so you tax them to account for those externalities. This is the same reason why governments subsidize infrastructure and education, as those generate positive externalities to society, and most of the value generated is in those externalities, you need a negative tax on those items to…

> I'd even go and propose that cars over €50k should be taxed at a higher marginal tax rate than lower-priced cars.

> I'm not proposing to tax spending, I'm proposing to tax a good so that its price accurately reflects the negative impact on society it causes.

It seems like you're proposing taxing based on the price of the good, not the cost of the negative externalities. It would make more sense to tax based on some combination of the car's weight, footprint, engine size, fuel efficiency, and emissions metrics, based on use of the vehicle, as well as at purchase time.

A vehicle that's a luxury item, but otherwise comparable in relevant statistics, doesn't necessarily need to be taxed more heavily than a basic version of the same thing.

Re: Soon, Cars in Denmark Will Only Be Taxed at 100% (2017)

#102

Post by khedoros1 »

ucaetano wrote: post #86
ansgri wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, to extract welfare funding from rich people you already have income taxes (maybe even progressive), why exactly does one want to encourage a low-quality lifestyle?

Because expensive cars are luxury goods with negative externalities.

Which externalities does an expensive car have that a cheap one doesn't?

Re: Soon, Cars in Denmark Will Only Be Taxed at 100% (2017)

#103

Post by ceejayoz »

devnonymous wrote: post #61
ceejayoz wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economic freedom (which I'm presuming means "lower taxes"?) isn't much use to you if you're executed for possessing drugs, or indefinitely detained without charge, need a permit to assemble, can't criticize the government, etc.

> if you're executed for possessing drugs, or indefinitely detained without charge, need a permit to assemble, can't criticize the government, etc. Erm, all those things(+) can, and do, happen in 'free' countries. They're just not officially sanctioned and are reported differently. If you were to look at this objectively (without depending on just the official figures) I'd say per capita, human rights abuse / exploit…

OK... but I never claimed the US to be a "libertarian paradise", either. Neither the US nor Singapore could be, by any stretch of imagination, accurately deemed "libertarian paradises".

Re: Soon, Cars in Denmark Will Only Be Taxed at 100% (2017)

#104

Post by ucaetano »

khedoros1 wrote: post #101
ucaetano wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So you punish those who have/want one? Ouch, I wouldn't want to live in your world. No. Cars have negative externalities to society, so you tax them to account for those externalities. This is the same reason why governments subsidize infrastructure and education, as those generate positive externalities to society, and most of the value generated is in those externalities, you need a negative tax on those items to…

> I'd even go and propose that cars over €50k should be taxed at a higher marginal tax rate than lower-priced cars. > I'm not proposing to tax spending, I'm proposing to tax a good so that its price accurately reflects the negative impact on society it causes. It seems like you're proposing taxing based on the price of the good, not the cost of the negative externalities. It would make more sense to tax based on some…

> It seems like you're proposing taxing based on the price of the good, not the cost of the negative externalities.

Wrong. I'm proposing that to have the same economic incentive on a luxury version of a certain good you need a higher proportional tax to account for the flattening of personal utility curves.

And that's before we get into the fact that luxury vehicles have even higher negative externalities due to increased engine size, lower fuel efficiency, larger size, etc.

Re: Soon, Cars in Denmark Will Only Be Taxed at 100% (2017)

#105

Post by ucaetano »

khedoros1 wrote: post #102
ucaetano wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because expensive cars are luxury goods with negative externalities.

Which externalities does an expensive car have that a cheap one doesn't?

Larger size, larger engine, more natural resources required (and more pollution).

Also, not only you need to account for the negative externalities, but you also need to provide a disincentive for purchase, which then needs to be progressive due to the decreasing marginal personal utility.

Re: Soon, Cars in Denmark Will Only Be Taxed at 100% (2017)

#106

Post by ebbv »

Drdrdrq wrote: post #34
ebbv wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I obviously don't know where you live, but it sounds crazy to people in the US because in most of the US public transportation an bicycle infrastructure is not where it needs to be to make them viable for daily life. In places where public transportation is better (like say NYC), car ownership is the exception rather than the rule. The reality is cars have a massive public cost that we all subsidize via various taxes…

> so that 1 hour (or longer) commutes via car are not the norm. Is this really the norm in the states? Is this just home -> work route or does it include dropping off kids, shopping,...? Genuinly curious...

It is pretty normal in some parts. Not everywhere. But in the Midwest it’s very common for people to live out in the suburbs and have a long freeway drive in to work. I went 45 minutes each way for years.

Re: Soon, Cars in Denmark Will Only Be Taxed at 100% (2017)

#107

Post by tzs »

reaperducer wrote: post #83
andys627 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isn't much... $200/yr. For comparison: California $83/yr. Nevada $33/yr.

Nevada isn't exactly $33/year. When I lived there, even a small economy car, it was well over $400. It's how many counties pay for schools instead of property tax. It's also why so many Nevadans get mad at the thousands of people from California who move to Nevada and don't register their vehicles, then complain about the schools that they send their kids to but don't pay for. This web site shows that a two-year-old…

Dealing with people who don't register their cars seems like a problem that should be reasonably solvable, if enough people are pissed off by it.

Authorize police to issue tickets to cars with expired out of state registration. Make the tickets dismissible if you have lived in Nevada less than whatever the grace period is they give for new residents to register and you get the car registered in time. Make it so the dismissal happens automatically upon registration. Provide a way for officers to quickly check to see if a car already has a pending ticket for this so that a given car only gets ticketed once.

There should not be many people who are living in Nevada and driving around Nevada with expired out of state registration and are not trying to cheat. About the only such people that come to mind are people who moved to Nevada near when their registration was going to expire in their old state, so did not renew it, and are still in the grace period for registration in Nevada.

Some of those people will have the slight hassle of receiving one ticket, but since they are not trying to cheat, and therefore are going to register by the deadline anyway they don't have to do anything about it. It will automatically go away when they register.

The above should catch a lot of the cases, especially if police are authorized to pull over people to issue these tickets, as opposed to just allowing them to issue these tickets to parked cars they come across or issue them incidentally during pull overs for other issues.

Of course there might be people who decide to fake it. In many states the indication of current registration is just a sticker with year of expiration on it stuck onto the license plate. It would not take a master forger to make a fake sticker. (Heck, if someone's home state is sufficiently cheaper for registration, they might even not let their home state they have left, and keep registering their car there!).

It would be going too far to try to crack down on non-expired out of state plates directly, because a large number of those are going to be visitors, not residents (especially for a state like Nevada that has a large number of automobile tourists visiting).

To deal with the people who fake it (or keep registering in their old state), they would probably have to limit it to checking only when they pull someone over for some other violation like speeding or drunk driving where they can check ID. Unless the driver has kept a current (or fake current) out of state driver's license matching their out of state plates with them, the jig will be up. Make it so that these people get hit with a very large fine.

Re: Soon, Cars in Denmark Will Only Be Taxed at 100% (2017)

#108

Post by khedoros1 »

ucaetano wrote: post #105
khedoros1 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which externalities does an expensive car have that a cheap one doesn't?

Larger size, larger engine, more natural resources required (and more pollution). Also, not only you need to account for the negative externalities, but you also need to provide a disincentive for purchase, which then needs to be progressive due to the decreasing marginal personal utility.

Those aren't aspects of just luxury cars...and they're aspects that I covered in my previous post.

> but you also need to provide a disincentive for purchase

You need to pay for the externalities. Beyond that, I disagree that you need to disincentivize the purchase.

Re: Soon, Cars in Denmark Will Only Be Taxed at 100% (2017)

#109

Post by khedoros1 »

ucaetano wrote: post #104
khedoros1 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd even go and propose that cars over €50k should be taxed at a higher marginal tax rate than lower-priced cars. > I'm not proposing to tax spending, I'm proposing to tax a good so that its price accurately reflects the negative impact on society it causes. It seems like you're proposing taxing based on the price of the good, not the cost of the negative externalities. It would make more sense to tax based on some…

> It seems like you're proposing taxing based on the price of the good, not the cost of the negative externalities. Wrong. I'm proposing that to have the same economic incentive on a luxury version of a certain good you need a higher proportional tax to account for the flattening of personal utility curves. And that's before we get into the fact that luxury vehicles have even higher negative externalities due to incr…

> Wrong

Then I think you're being very unclear in what you're saying. The externalities aren't necessarily related to the price of the vehicle.

Re: Soon, Cars in Denmark Will Only Be Taxed at 100% (2017)

#110

Post by vinni2 »

zackmorris wrote: post #95

I noticed most of the comments in this thread were about not wanting a high tax rate of 100%. I just want to offer a counterexample where people are all for it: in Costa Rica there is a similar import tax on luxury and technology items and is roughly 50-80% on cars: http://www.costaricatax.com/import-tax.htm http://www.costaricatax.com/luxury-tax-cars.htm One of the main reasons for this is that everyone wants to go…

I used to live in Northern Denmark and I have experienced their healthcare first hand and witnessed social welfare which helped my friends and colleagues. And I still do think this is excessive tax not well justified for the following reasons:

1. I would expect a state of the art public transport in the whole country. The rail system connecting different cities in Denmark is pretty dated and slow. Even using diesel engines in some parts. Now I would expect some part of that 180% tax to be invested here. But the fact is people are often forced to drive with car due to poor public transport connectivity in many places.

2. Even electric cars are not exempt from these high taxes anymore. This eliminates the benefit of the doubt that this was for the good of the environment.

3. The high tax for cars has historical roots. Many in Denmark believe it is no longer necessary today to fund the welfare state. https://www.thelocal.dk/20151120/whats-the-deal-with-denmark...

4. These high taxes are also defeating the purpose of keeping the environment clean by creating a huge market for used really old cars which are often the worst polluters. https://mereconomics.com/2016/02/09/on-the-efficiency-of-dan...

5. Opinion: It all boils down to having free health care, free education, really good welfare system and not being able to afford a car. Other European countries like Germany seem to have worked out a model which can make all of them affordable to most people.

I can go on but got bored.

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