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Electric Cars – fuel duty and road tax: how to replace £35B annual revenue

carwow.co.uk

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Re: Electric Cars – fuel duty and road tax: how to replace £35B annual revenue

#121

Post by TimPC »

dazc wrote: post #63
MafellUser wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You will NEVER catch the perpetrator. Period. Also the cost of enforcement will quickly outpace any revenue gained, as council's parking enforcements has shown. Even when caught says on CCTV, there's no guarantee you can find and fine the driver. There are over half a million uninsured cars on the UK streets at any time. Twice that many uninsured drivers. Even getting them to pay for insurance is hard enough, how dif…

> 'Even getting them to pay for insurance is hard enough, how difficult do you think it'd be to get them to pay £10k fine?' In a lot of cases the fine for having no insurance is lower than the insurance would have cost. In other words, the system is seriously f*d up and needs to be changed.

Driving without insurance should be a jailable offence and needs to be taken far more seriously. You are at risk of not having coverage when you cause significant injury or death to someone. If a breadwinner for a family is no longer able to work, the verdict may be more than you can earn in a lifetime which makes you into some sort of debt slave. Not having insurance when you can inflict severe harm on other people is quite dystopian.

Re: Electric Cars – fuel duty and road tax: how to replace £35B annual revenue

#122

Post by balderdash »

I think people are starting from the wrong end of the problem. It appears we have two types of roads, access roads (think last mile roads in residential or rural areas) whose replacement cycle is driven by useful life vs usage. Then we have high throughput roads, that have enough volume to require usage driven replacement cycles. So if those access roads are y% of the miles and x% of the cost, then a vehicle “access” tax should be levied to cover that part of the system, and toll/usage based tax should be levied to maintain the usage based part of the system.

Side note: to adjust for the pollution CO2 element you could add a tax to the wholesale price per MW of electricity based on generation type, in addition to a lower, purely pollution priced gas tax

Re: Electric Cars – fuel duty and road tax: how to replace £35B annual revenue

#123

Post by throwaway2037 »

phpisthebest wrote: post #97
neilwilson wrote: post #87

Oh dear. Somebody didn't pass the geometric sequence question on their GSCE maths paper. The £35B revenue replaces itself, because money doesn't stop at its first use. What you don't spend on fuel duty, you spend on something else, which is subject to VAT, causes wages to be paid subject to PAYE, and profits to be earned subject to corporation tax. They then spend their increased income cause more tax to be raised an…

>>firstly because you can't rely on it and secondly because a sovereign government has no need of revenue in the first place. That's not the purpose of taxes! Soo much wrong here... Revenue should be the ONLY purpose of taxation, and falsehood that sovereign government steams from a combination of fiat currency and MMT, which when combined and executed on like you are implying lead to inflation can currency collapse…

How do you feel about relatively high taxes on alcohol and cigarettes? I enjoy a good beer, but I understand the reason for alcohol tax. Do you also favor low cigarette taxation? The "end of life" costs for heavy cigarette smokers cannot be overlooked! Also, the UK had a lot of success with the sugar tax.

Re: Electric Cars – fuel duty and road tax: how to replace £35B annual revenue

#124

Post by TimPC »

causi wrote: post #29
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would just result in a trivial tax for personal vehicles and high taxes on heavy trucks (which would just get passed on resulting in more or less a consumption tax, which isn't necessarily bad but that's outside scope for here) Additionally, despite a lot of people saying they want to use taxes to "handle externalities" or some other sort of "pay per usage" type manner like that what they actually want is to tax…

That would just result in a trivial tax for personal vehicles and high taxes on heavy trucks (which would just get passed on resulting in more or less a consumption tax) That is the entire point. Why are we subsidizing other peoples' bad decisions? If you want to go shop for fast fashion every other day or drive a 9,036-pound electric Hummer the rest of us should not pay the price for your jackassery.

I think you’re underestimating how fourth powers work. If you want to charge a 10,000 pound hummer $1000/year to provide substantial disincentive then you end up charging a five axel semi trailer (75,000 pounds) $3,164,000/year. That obviously doesn’t work.

Re: Electric Cars – fuel duty and road tax: how to replace £35B annual revenue

#125

Post by stefan_ »

causi wrote: post #5

Tax vehicles based on actual wear to the road surface and add it to the annual tag renewal. Of course, that would stop us from conveniently ignoring the fact that the vast majority of road wear comes from semi-trucks and other heavy vehicles.

Conveniently ignoring the fact that roads have terrible capacity as a transport system and therefore many many many miles of terribly expensive road only exist to accommodate the space taken up by a comparatively small number of vehicles, with semi-trucks and other heavy vehicles often a minority.

Count the heavy vehicles: https://twitter.com/urbanthoughts11/status/11912952051876864...

Don't get me wrong, the tax system is setup as a massive subsidy to trucking on roads that should be eliminated so this stuff can move onto trains where it belongs for everything but the last mile, but a big part of the cost is also just the space and area consumed by it all.

Re: Electric Cars – fuel duty and road tax: how to replace £35B annual revenue

#126

Post by dahfizz »

Robotbeat wrote: post #101
wil421 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Indeed, here in the states, cyclists pay for the roads that we use. For instance most local roads in cities and counties are paid for with property taxes. Not true for a lot of states. Property tax is not used for roads. Georgia pays for roads using gas taxes and road use fees like registration (tolls contribute a very small amount). Florida is similar but they are much more toll heavy. Alabama is similar as too. A…

EV fees are already much higher than the state gas tax they replace in many places, especially considering the extra sales tax on the battery, tax on electricity, and even personal property tax on the battery. The idea EVs get a free pass is a myth.

> especially considering the extra sales tax on the battery, tax on electricity, and even personal property tax on the battery.

I don't understand, do you pay an extra tax on the battery? Sales & property tax on a $60k car should always be the same, regardless of powertrain.

Re: Electric Cars – fuel duty and road tax: how to replace £35B annual revenue

#127

Post by hexo »

blibble wrote: post #69
happyopossum wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you trust a government imposed GPS based tracking system to properly account for those edge cases? I sure as hell wouldn’t. Also, those aren’t exempted under the current gas tax model anyway, so why bother?

I would indeed prefer the odometer based solution to the GPS but it's not perfect (and you are currently exempted from the gax tax model if you have a electric vehicle on private roads / tracks, I doubt too many are affected by this though)

I would prefer freedom and privacy to both "solutions".

Re: Electric Cars – fuel duty and road tax: how to replace £35B annual revenue

#128

Post by innocentoldguy »

matsemann wrote: post #2

There is no "road tax" in the UK, is it? It's a fee for polluting, not using the road. I hate that it's being used as an argument against cyclists: "get off the road, you don't pay road tax". This of course also ignores that most adult cyclists also own a car.. Norway have the same issues now. Almost all new cars are electric. You don't pay purchase tax / vat when buying it. Pay less on toll roads. Cheaper to use. Et…

> This of course also ignores that most adult cyclists also own a car.

What does owning a car have to do with it? If you own two cars, or a car and a scooter, you still have to pay taxes for both to be on the road, don’t you?

EDIT: I forgot to mention, where I live taxes aren’t collected as a “fee for polluting.” They’re to keep roads maintained and improve them. This often includes special bike lanes that bicyclists do nothing to pay for.

Re: Electric Cars – fuel duty and road tax: how to replace £35B annual revenue

#129

Post by innocentoldguy »

analog31 wrote: post #51
matsemann wrote: post #2

There is no "road tax" in the UK, is it? It's a fee for polluting, not using the road. I hate that it's being used as an argument against cyclists: "get off the road, you don't pay road tax". This of course also ignores that most adult cyclists also own a car.. Norway have the same issues now. Almost all new cars are electric. You don't pay purchase tax / vat when buying it. Pay less on toll roads. Cheaper to use. Et…

>>>> I hate that it's being used as an argument against cyclists: "get off the road, you don't pay road tax". This of course also ignores that most adult cyclists also own a car. Indeed, here in the states, cyclists pay for the roads that we use. For instance most local roads in cities and counties are paid for with property taxes. Income taxes cover a fair amount of road construction. The county bike paths have a fe…

> Indeed, here in the states, cyclists pay for the roads that we use.

This isn’t true where I live. Taxes on gasoline purchases pay for the roads.

Re: Electric Cars – fuel duty and road tax: how to replace £35B annual revenue

#130

Post by ClumsyPilot »

TimPC wrote: post #121
dazc wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 'Even getting them to pay for insurance is hard enough, how difficult do you think it'd be to get them to pay £10k fine?' In a lot of cases the fine for having no insurance is lower than the insurance would have cost. In other words, the system is seriously f*d up and needs to be changed.

Driving without insurance should be a jailable offence and needs to be taken far more seriously. You are at risk of not having coverage when you cause significant injury or death to someone. If a breadwinner for a family is no longer able to work, the verdict may be more than you can earn in a lifetime which makes you into some sort of debt slave. Not having insurance when you can inflict severe harm on other people…

> If a breadwinner for a family is no longer able to work, the verdict may be more than you can earn in a lifetime which makes you into some sort of debt slave.

the bigger issue is the breadwinner's family will go from middle class to living in poverty. The types that don't pay insurance are not gonna pay court settlement in a timely manner.

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