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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

#71

Post by redeeman »

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…

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?

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

#72

Post by milliams »

Does not the switch to electric vehicles offer indirect savings elsewhere, making the £35B deficit less? For example, a reduction in air pollution leading to better health and less NHS use, less greenhouse emissions leading to less spent of fighting that uphill battle, less fuel being imported giving various third-order effects.

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

#73

Post by bhawks »

rexreed wrote: post #49

Or... maybe national taxes should pay for national roads as a form of national infrastructure, state or county taxes paying for state or county roads and local taxes for local roads. Isn't this the way roads were paid for before widespread use of personal vehicles? Roads are a shared benefit for all whether you own or drive a vehicle or not. Think of deliveries and public transport and other approaches in which you p…

But then we wouldn't be able to put cameras everywhere and GPS trackers in people's cars?

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

#74

Post by unglaublich »

redeeman wrote: post #71
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…

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?

Cars are a huge burden on health, safety, environment and quality of life. It has never been a secret that governments tax cars to subsidize causes that should partially compensate the indirect damage that cars do to their countries.

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

#75

Post by HPsquared »

rexreed wrote: post #49

Or... maybe national taxes should pay for national roads as a form of national infrastructure, state or county taxes paying for state or county roads and local taxes for local roads. Isn't this the way roads were paid for before widespread use of personal vehicles? Roads are a shared benefit for all whether you own or drive a vehicle or not. Think of deliveries and public transport and other approaches in which you p…

It's a kind of substitute for tolls, an alternative pay-as-you-go system.

Edit: of course it neglects that not all roads are created equal, some have a much higher cost and value per passenger-mile (e.g. bridges)

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

#76

Post by wil421 »

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. 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. All 3 states are in the top 10 roads in America[1]. I believe Georgia plans to charge higher registration fees for EVs at some point.

[1] https://www.consumeraffairs.com/automotive/us-road-condition...

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

#77

Post by bhawks »

leoedin wrote: post #46

The "per unit of energy" pricing of liquid fuels is quite appealing as it encourages efficiency. Even when people are using electric cars, efficiency is beneficial. I wonder if some sort of banded electricity pricing would work - you can consume x kWh at a lower price, and then a surplus tax applies. It's fairly easy to tax public charging. That would still encourage people to seek efficient EVs.

You could achieve basically the same result by reading the odometer and giving discounts or premiums based on the make/model of the car. No need to measure/tier electricity usage.

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

#78

Post by IndrekR »

For the road wear — tax the tires proportional to the tire weight. But that most likely would mean few-fold increase in the tire cost and may impair road safety. Easier to add an annual fee proportional to the square of fully loaded vehicle mass. Would be about £1k/yr on average. Less for smaller cars, more for larger ones.

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

#79

Post by est31 »

happyopossum wrote: post #64
causi wrote: post #29

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) 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 trivializing the effect that shipping costs have on every day necessities. Far more trucks haul produce and other groceries around my neighborhood than ‘fast fashion’, and as we are seeing right now significant increases in those prices have an outsized effect on the most vulnerable.

The current system might cause the entire economy to spend more on transportation overall. A 2 times as heavy truck might be able to transport 3 times as much as a "baseline" truck (these numbers are off, but it usually scales sublinearly), but it causes 16 times the wear of one trip. That means that switching to that heavier truck model causes 5.333 times of the wear on your country's roads. Now if you let everyone pay a mostly flat tax, it means that there is no motivation for logistics companies to have a larger number of trucks, because it means they have to pay for more drivers, etc.

Say that all logistics companies switch to the bigger trucks and now only pay half of their costs, so e.g. 3 billion instead of 6 billion per year. Now assume that road maintenance used to cost 1 billion annually. With the new system it will cost 5.33 billion. So you have savings by the logistics companies of 3 billion per year contrasted by additional maintenance expenses of 4.33 billion per year. So your economy now spends 1.33 billion more per annum on transport, if it's through a higher base rate on your car's license or through more income taxes being redirected for road maintenance instead of building schools or whatever.

These numbers are totally made up for me, and were only meant to demonstrate that not internalizing externalities can lead to inefficiencies.

It's true that if you increase taxes for heavy trucks, customers will notice it via grocery store price increases. That's maybe the problem why it's not being done, because voters notice it way less that a road repair is more expensive and thus a school can't be renovated or something.

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

#80

Post by unglaublich »

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…

Some motorists seem to forget that cyclists don't need a 30m wide, 40cm thick, heavily reinforced highway with stabilized foundation that has to be revised every year to account for the damage caused by heavy vehicles.

The costs of a cycling path that support the same flow of people is negligible compared to that of a corresponding highway.

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