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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

#221

Post by Flockster »

dotancohen wrote: post #217
analog31 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>>> 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 f…

That sounds interesting, do you have some more infos about this, how the 4th power comes about? I don't have any intuition why it would be that "high". Or some keywords to lead my google searches ;)

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

#222

Post by zaroth »

zip1234 wrote: post #210
bagels wrote: post #193

This debate is so tedious. Why not just slightly increase property tax or income tax? Why does it have to be usage based? Most other government services are done this way, we all benefit from having roads.

There are significant negative externalities to driving.

There are, however, much more significant positive intrinsic and extrinsic values to pervasive passenger and truck infrastructure than there are negative externalities.

Namely, it’s a fundamental underpinning of modern civilization.

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

#223

Post by neilwilson »

makomk wrote: post #114
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…

Pretty sure that argument doesn't actually work, though the reason why is a little subtle. Sure, the money doesn't stop at its first use, but whatever goods or services the money is spent on by consumers do. That is, if this tax revenue isn't replaced by some other equivalent source of tax revenue its disappearance will increase the amount consumers have available to spend in nominal non-inflation-adjusted terms by £…

"without creating any correspending increase in the goods or services available to purchase"

Why would it not create more to purchase? If you go into a hairdresser with money in your pocket do they work harder to get the queue down or shut the shop and put the prices up.

The limit is actually available unemployment/underemployment, even now we still have millions without work that want it, less the increase in the level of saving. More saving = more space.

Hence when Tories decry their proposed tax cuts as 'debt fuelled', they really ought to hope that they are since that will reduce inflationary pressures.

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

#224

Post by neilwilson »

ErikVandeWater wrote: post #104
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…

> 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?

I can't do any better than Beardsley Ruml, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, who explained it in the 1940s. [0]

[0] http://home.hiwaay.net/~becraft/RUMLTAXES.html

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

#225

Post by ApolloFortyNine »

ehnto wrote: post #171
nemo44x wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hate that it's being used as an argument against cyclists: "get off the road, you don't pay road tax". It's really more that many cyclists are in the way and aren't going the speed limit. You end up holding up a lot of traffic that is forced to go slower and that's annoying to everyone. to be frank, when you're driving a car a person on a bike taking up the entire road is annoying. This is why people really disli…

That's a nasty bias you have. Cyclists are clearly also "people trying to get somewhere". I'd argue they're trying harder than you are. I won't defend all cyclists, some of them have bad etiquette for sure. I certainly don't have traffic piled up behind me. But I'd argue they've inconvenienced you far less than your car infrastructure has inconvenienced them. I promise if they had a separated fast bike lane to use, t…

The cyclists in the US I see in a suburban area are almost all doing it for exercise (pretty obvious from the getup), not to get somewhere.

In a more downtown area it's obviously different.

>dealing with people angry they're late for their next stoplight.

Sounds like you have some nasty bias yourself.

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

#226

Post by dahfizz »

yohannparis wrote: post #150
nemo44x wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hate that it's being used as an argument against cyclists: "get off the road, you don't pay road tax". It's really more that many cyclists are in the way and aren't going the speed limit. You end up holding up a lot of traffic that is forced to go slower and that's annoying to everyone. to be frank, when you're driving a car a person on a bike taking up the entire road is annoying. This is why people really disli…

> many cyclists [...] aren't going the speed limit. It's a speed upper limit, not a minimum. Are you upset when an agricole machine is using the public roads? This "annoyance" against people not travelling at the speed limit on public roads is based on a lack of time management and the expectation that the road is empty. This is a selfish point of view. When I want to control my travelling time, I walk or cycle. When…

> Are you upset when an agricole machine is using the public roads?

Nope.

1) Any tractor I've been behind on a public road will pull over to let traffic pass by when possible.

2) Tractors obey all traffic lights and laws and behave predictably.

3) I've never seen a tractor driver act aggressively towards a car.

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

#227

Post by neilwilson »

chongli wrote: post #113
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…

Who says they have to spend that money? What if they instead throw it in a tax-free savings account and use it to buy stocks & bonds?

Buying stocks and bonds is spending the money. You've given the money to somebody else in exchange for something. Now they have the same choice as you did - spend or save.

If you save it in a tax free savings account even better. The bank holding the offsetting reserves then does the buying via the DMO cash management process.

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

#228

Post by neilwilson »

SoftTalker wrote: post #218
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The money government prints is backed by the best asset of them all - the power to recover it as taxation.

Paying the tax to the tax collector is far cheaper than the alternative amount you end up paying to the bailiff when they confiscate all your assets.

Taxation is, ultimately, the only 'reserve' asset there is. And as you can see it is very definitely backed by real assets. All your real assets.

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

#229

Post by dahfizz »

faichai wrote: post #19

Everyone always seems to jump from general schemes (road tax, fuel duty) to Orwellian tracking (GPS everywhere). Seems like a simple scheme of mileage tracking and net charge tracking would do. You then have an overall energy use / mile figure that you can use to price each mile so people who buy more efficient cars are rewarded, and then charge by total number of miles, so people who do fewer miles pay less.

Do you think that people should only withdraw exactly what they deposited from Social Security? Do you think that a patient should pay 100% of their healthcare costs under socialized medicine?

I find it so strange that roads aren't viewed as a public service, and instead should be taxed (regressively) to cover the cost of the road by those using it.

I'm fine paying fully for my own road use, as long as I can stop paying for all the government services I don't use. But as long as the government is taking half of my paycheck, providing me with roads is the bare minimum they could give in return.

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

#230

Post by Tiktaalik »

zaroth wrote: post #222
zip1234 wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are significant negative externalities to driving.

There are, however, much more significant positive intrinsic and extrinsic values to pervasive passenger and truck infrastructure than there are negative externalities. Namely, it’s a fundamental underpinning of modern civilization.

transportation is fundamental, that its necessarily via incredibly space inefficient personal automobile is not.
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