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

carwow.co.uk

241–250 of 360 posts

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

#241

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…

> Lots of budgets are now off because they estimated X amounts from cars using toll roads, but half of them don't pay the price.

Citation needed.

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

#242
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't find any data on what products make up what proportions of the gross weight of land shipping. Without that data it's not productive to debate who would be most hurt by shipping trucks losing their road-wear subsidy.

> Without that data it's not productive to debate It sure is convenient that it's "not productive" to debate one of the biggest and most obvious downsides to what you're advocating for. Don't get me wrong, I loathe the people who have a 4Runner for a household with one kid but their stupidity might just be collateral damage of an otherwise decent overall system.

It sure is convenient that it's "not productive" to debate one of the biggest and most obvious downsides to what you're advocating for.

I'm not saying you're wrong; I'm saying I can't find data backing up your statement. It would be good if you were right because that would mean the world as it is currently is slightly better than if I was right.

Regardless, disincentivizing total shipped mass is not entirely a bad thing. It disincentivises planned obsolescence and poor quality products in favor of reliable, repairable goods.

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

#243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’d be pretty bad to penalize electric cars based on weight squared unless fossil fuels are eliminated from transportation. Then I agree.

It's not really a penalty. Road repair costs are real and you should be paying your share proportional to your usage of the road and the amount of damage your vehicle causes. When ICE are the only game in town, a fuel tax is a simple solution because larger more damaging vehicles are generally less fuel efficient. The downside is that anyone using fuel for non-ICEV usage is unfairly taxed. Perhaps putting the tax on…

Fuel taxes WERE ALWAYS supposed to be a conservation measure and Pigouvian tax on pollution AS WELL AS a use tax. So a replacement tax that doesn’t have the same effect of taxing CO2 emissions is effectively subsidizing CO2 emissions compared to the status quo.

That seems like a bad idea.

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

#244

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.

We have not operated fractional reserve banking for generations.

A bank today can give out loans and mortgages without any assets.

https://positivemoney.org/2011/04/monetary-reform-myths-1-10...

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

#245
These sorts of articles have always confused me. This would be a great problem to have! If gas usage gas halves then double the tax, and so on. Once gas taxes are 10-20x what they are today, we can talk about how to find replacement revenue.

Also; the annual ongoing damage Britain is incurring from burning fossil fuels is already way above 35 billion pounds. Focusing on where the money for those repairs is coming from is probably more important.

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

#246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. With gas cars, you pay for gasoline over time. With electric cars, you pay about 50/50 upfront on battery & over time on electricity. EV owners are being punished for paying for part of the “fuel” costs upfront. For whatever reason, capital costs for consumers are penalized with taxes more than incremental operating costs.

> For whatever reason, capital costs for consumers are penalized with taxes more than incremental operating costs. How so? Is the gas tax lower than the purchase taxes?

Yes, plus personal property tax. If I own the car for 8 years before selling it and the battery is about $10,000 In value and the sales tax rate is 6% or so, the tax I’m paying is already equal to the gas tax I already typically would pay driving a 30mpg the average number of miles per year in a typical state. And some localities have personal property taxes, and that $10,000 battery often puts the car in a higher bracket, so you end up paying a 4% personal property tax EVERY YEAR on the battery, which is about 5 times what state gas tax would be.

And keep in mind many states already charge EV owners a high registration fee that more than makes up for the lack of state gas taxes. So sales tax plus personal property tax plus EV registration fee… you’re already paying nearly an order of magnitude more than the typical consumer pays state gas tax.

It’s a pretty stupid idea to charge far more taxes for far lower emissions vehicles if you think climate change is real. Regardless of your rationale about use taxes or whatever. It’s just stupid.

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

#247
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

That might change if there was more dedicated bike lanes.

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

#248
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Few people cyclists in the U.S.A. suburs are cycling for transport instead of sport... because of the infrastructure. Only mad cyclists dare their life for it!

The danger while cycling is not the bike or falling down, it's the motorized users.

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

#249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>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.

I guess that depends on what you define as "success" going along with the not using taxes to legislate morality, I also do not believe it is the role of government to protect someone from their own bad choices (i.e sugar or cigarettes), going along with this is one of the reasons I oppose a single payer government run health care system in the US, because if we have a UK style health system then adding in all of these legislative actions to control every aspect of a persons life becomes a valid cost control argument

I dont want the government telling me what I can or can not eat, or setting tax policy on their recommendation. I also grew up with the food pyramid as the "government approved" diet that today most people agree is terrible, and if it did not directly cause it heavily aided in the obesity epidemic we have today (in the US).

Distrust in government is our (the US) founding principle, and I have a HEAVY distrust of all government experts. As one of our presidents famously said "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are "I'm from the Government and I'm here to help"

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

#250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

1) Cyclist are on the right side of the road (not against the ditch/gutter/curb...), and easy to see past them to know if you can safely pass them.

2) Most cyclist do, some do not, same as drivers 3) Same as 2), and cyclist can be aggressive when your life is at stake. I think drivers mostly forget they are in charge of a dangerous machine.

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