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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

#211

Post by standardUser »

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…

"Which was great to get the initial people to convert, and get the infrastructure in place. But now it's time to tax them. "

Maybe in Norway, and only Norway. Every other nation should be quadrupling-down on EV incentives. Or 10 fold. Or 20.

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

#212

Post by robertlagrant »

efaref wrote: post #187
semanticist wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some of the money is used to fund the maintenance of highways, though. Only in the sense that some of all tax money is used in that way - VED just gets pooled with all tax income, none of it is 'ring fenced' for any specific purpose. That's why the idea of 'road tax' is so annoying, since it implies it's to be used for a specific purpose.

"Road tax" is a _tax_ you have to pay in order to use the _road_. It's the most natural name for it, which is why people call it that. Despite the words they use, it's not a vehicle tax: you can own a vehicle without paying it as long as you declare that you will not use the vehicle _on_the_road_ (a.k.a., make a Statutory Off Road Notification). It's a tax for using the roads. A road tax. That the government don't ri…

> That the government don't ring-fence it to use on road maintenance is irrelevant.

It's not irrelevant to the quoted section, which is the only thing the previous poster was replying to.

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

#213

Post by robertlagrant »

matsemann wrote: post #89
redeeman wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so perhaps its also time for the government to admit that the prior taxes didnt have ANYTHING to do with environment, but just a way to justify money grabbing to spend on their own worthy causes?

No, it's the opposite. You don't want people to drive because of the environment, health, noise, road "accidents" killing people, how it destroys cities etc. So the taxes are a direct incentive to find alternative modes of travel.

Not really. They exist because cars are required. If we all became able to live our lives purely with cycling then cycling would be taxed.

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

#214

Post by robertlagrant »

Robotbeat wrote: post #167
enragedcacti wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A Tesla model 3 is the same weight as a BMW 340 Sure, but its also 500-1200lbs heavier than a Civic depending on the trims of each which has very similar utility to an M3 and is much closer in TCO to a model 3 than a 340 or an X3 is. We shouldn't be having our cake and eating it too by saying "electric cars are more expensive but the TCO so much lower than ICE that its worth it" and then make comparisons to ICE veh…

It’s comparing to a similar performance ICE vehicle. Model 3 is much higher performance than the civic, more comparable to the BMW.

Performance isn't relevant.

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

#215

Post by zackmorris »

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.

Came here to say the same thing. Road wear comes from heavy transport fleets, not commuter vehicles, so all of the infrastructure to monitor semis and tax shipping fuels is already in place.

The shipping industry doesn't want to pay that tax, which is why they're lobbying to pass the tax onto the rest of us.

Privatize profits, socialize costs.

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

#216

Post by ehnto »

timellis-smith wrote: post #183
ehnto wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd take a rough separated cycle path over a shared car road any day.

Depending on what type of bike you have. On a mountain bike, anyday. On a road bike with paper thin tyres that easily puncture, maybe not so much.

Definitely concur, for commuting I ride a pretty wide tire for that reason. I've actually really enjoyed cross-bikes for city commuting, since they're designed for a bit more of a pliable ride and more comfort while still running pretty fast overall.

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

#217

Post by dotancohen »

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…

  > My hunch is that if one were to look closely at the funding of roads, one would find that they represent a net subsidy for heavy trucking.
Road wear grows at the 4th power of vehicular weight, assuming similar tire pressures. An F-150 that weighs one and a half times what your Mazda 3 weighs, does 5 times the road wear.

Would you like to calculate how much those tomatoes would cost, if everybody were paying their fair share of road wear?

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

#218

Post by SoftTalker »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #135
ErikVandeWater wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a sovereign government has no need of revenue in the first place. Please explain this. Are you suggesting governments can just stop taxing, and print the money to pay their debts with no ill consequences?

People think government works like a household budget - it doesn't. Think about it - who controls how much money is the economy? Does someone measure 'okay the economy has grown 5%, it needs 5% more money to be printed?" No, nobody does that. If the government prints zero money, the money supply can still quadruple, because banks create money out of thin air. Which is exactly what they did prior to 2008. The reason g…

The money that banks create by fractional reserve lending is (at least somewhat) backed by real assets. The money that governemnt 'prints' is backed by nothing.

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

#219

Post by cptskippy »

_ea1k wrote: post #120
mab122 wrote: post #48

Why not just tax the tires? Seems like they are good indicator on how much you are using roads and how many miles you drove etc. (Safety maybe an argument. Don't do it so people don't drive on shitty old ones)

That should work in places that have good inspection requirements. The downside is that it would penalize soft rubber as well as the usage of winter tires.

There's a pollution aspect to be considered as well. Soft rubber tires are more polluting. Would using summer/winter tires change things? Yes you'd pay the tax on 2 pairs of tires but your wear/replacement interval would be prolonged on both sets wouldn't it?

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

#220

Post by zip1234 »

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.

While we are at it, add tax for other externalities such as noise and air pollution.
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