Electric VehiclesThis is more than the average fossil car owner pays in gas taxes, and really bad policy during a world fuel shortage.
I already fucking pay an extra $225 a year for my EV tabs in Washington state, which ICE car drivers are completely exempt from paying. This is idiotic.
Also how would they even implement it? Federal government doesn't process car tab renewals..
Fine. Remove the fuel tax and switch to a yearly car tax on all vehicles.
The fuel tax is appropriate I think. Larger vehicles that do more damage typically use more fuel, get taxed more. Smaller vehicles that do less damage get taxed less. Driving more gets taxed more. I think we lean into it rather than away.
Quadruple the fuel tax, throw the proceeds toward building out the fast charger network, incentivizing solar charging at home through tax incentive programs, and expanding access to public transit options. All while phasing out fuel subsidies completely.
Fuel only wins right now because it's entrenched and subsidized. My buddy pays $6 worth of electricity to fully charge his electric subaru overnight. Removing the thumb on the scale toward fuel use will cause the electrification movement to cascade.
No it's not appropriate because we're driving to work to make a profit for our billionaire owners, so i have to buy a car pay the gas pay the maintenance eat the depreciation that i cannot deduct like a business and then on top of that i have to pay for the roads out of my salary too all so the owners can make more money tax free
Oil industry pays it. Final offer.
GHIIIINYAAA PAYS FOR IT
heh. heh. heh. That will teach them for making sensible economic decisions!
The party of free market economics and small government.
This is absolutely, completely pants-on-head idiotic.
So, par for the course for Congress.
Committee leaders said in a statement the levy was needed to ensure all highway users “pay their share” as part of an effort to supplant the gas tax to help pay for transportation projects.
I would be ok with this, as $130-$150 a year is not astronomical and hypothetically would be going towards the public good, but with this administration, I don't think they will be putting any money into actually improving life for the general public.
If it were pitched as an excise tax for all motor vehicle owners: sure.
This is specifically targeted on EVs. It’s an attempt to make EVs slightly less appetizing to the general public. Remember who is in charge of the house at the moment.
I believe that it was def a handout to gas and auto companies, but there is not currently a way that EVs are contributing to the public roads in the same way as gas taxes, right?
Edit: Looks like some states do have an annual fee for EVs already.
Most states I know of have an EV tax already
It looks like there is a charging tax in very few states, but it has problems.
https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/electric-vehicle-ev-taxes/
Another response by states to backfill reductions in gas tax collections has been to implement a tax on EV charging stations. States like Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, and Oklahoma impose a tax per kilowatt-hour distributed by charging stations. While this added user fee may help equalize treatment between combustion engines and EVs, because many users charge their EVs at home, these taxes can fail to fully account for EV road use.
The registration fees in your link are all annual registrations, not one-time events, which is in line with what I've experienced and heard about. In my state it's roughly equivalent to driving 15k miles/year in a 30 mpg average gas vehicle or 10k miles/year in a 20 mpg vehicle.
Ah, my bad. Thanks!
Par for a paid Congress. It wasn't like this and never was directly corrupt as the right has become.
it’s been like this forever. just varying levels of “depth” of course, but yeah… congress has been purchasable since say 1776 or so.
UK is doing the same thing. Well over US$200/yr. Flat fee.
Others pointed out its probably to replace the gas tax they won't be subject to. And I almost thought it was alright until I remembered most of our roads/infrastructure doesn't get repaired as it is.
Underfunded infrastructure isn't going to improve as a result of less tax though.
Unless there is a deliberate attempt to make EVs pay a lower share of road maintenance costs as part of a plan to increase uptake, with that lost funding collected elsewhere, you're just making roads worse by leaving the tax off.
The gas tax is far below what's needed for the roads
Probably because people vote down any gas tax increase
I wonder if they’ll miss older ICE vehicles that have been converted.
Because I can totally see a mid-90s sedan going stealth on its electric conversion to avoid said tax.
I would agree with a yearly fee for electric vehicles. But it needs to be based off mileage not a static number.
The entire purpose of such a fee is to compensate for the lack of gas taxes going back into the ecosystem that ICE vehicles have.
for perspective, at 130$ a year an ICE vehicle would need 706.5 gallons of fuel a year to meet it, and 815.2 gallons of fuel a year for the ending $150 equivalent. Assuming a average 24 Miles/g for residential, that's roughly 16,956 miles for the 706 gallons, and 19564.8 Miles for the 815.2 gallons.
My car has not done more than 3k miles in the last 2 years as I don't need to drive much. realistically I should be paying closer to 11.50 a year or 23 for both. The fact I would be paying the same amount as someone who drives daily constantly is insane to me.
The point is to discourage EVs. Not from tax revenue, but keep the bribes coming from oil and gas to politicians.
I’m sympathetic to the argument that we replace the 18.5 cents per gallon federal tax with something EV drivers (myself included) still pay. But it should incentivize further EV adoption and not discourage it, and should somehow scale with miles driven (incentives fewer miles driven.)
It should be something everybody pays. Not just EV drivers. The only fair road tax is to measure the distance driven every year during a car inspection and use the car/truck/bus weight to charge per mile driven.
This is the perfect time to switch to a mileage tax, because you can get rid of the tax at the pump and politically look like a “winner”, while actually bringing in more revenue. The gas tax hasn’t been raised since 1993.
There a privacy implication for the tracking mileage I’m not thrilled with, and would support an opt-out but paying more than average system.
Gas tax is/was ingenious because it was not privacy invasive and scaled perfectly with use. But not applicable in the age of EVs.
You could do a mileage one based on odometer inspection with a check for tampering. Require it as part of an annual safety inspection. Would be non-intrusive and mostly work ok
Yeah, you have to renew your registration annually anyway. Just add a field for the odometer reading, and there you go.
North America does not do any annual safety inspections.
True but most states do
This fair share concept is crazy to me. The vast majority of road wear comes from Semi Trucks, to why doesn't anyone want them to pay their fair share?
If the funding comes from a federal fuel tax, then the higher per gallon tax on diesel (and the much higher fuel consumption that cargo trucks have) mean they actually do.
You must be in Europe. Vehicles in North America are not inspected. They drive until they fall apart.
As always, that depends on the state. Some states actually have mandatory safety/emissions testing every year.
How about an EV fast charger tax? Same as gas.
If you charge at home, it’s tax free. Just like a gas tank in your back yard would be, I assume.
I think Republicans would buy that too, as it’s still technically “EV negative” and not very visible to constituents (just like the gas tax).
I quite like that idea, but would worry that home charging would leave too much road maintenance unfunded. Maybe a combination of a low flat EV fee and your fast charger tax.
I dunno. Psychologically, buyers don’t like an upfront tax. It’s just how our monkey brains are.
…How about an EV tax proportional to vehicle mass, or maybe battery mass/capacity? With a cutoff for tiny, cheap EVs. This would tax commercial vehicles and ridiculous luxury EVs like the Hummer EV, but incentivize small EVs or plug in hybrids. And it “makes sense” because heavy, long range vehicles wear roads more.
We like to subsidize heavy trucks with our money and our lives.
Just like a gas tank in your back yard would be, I assume.
How'd you get gas in your backyard tank without paying the tax? And if charging at home is tax free that just benefits the wealthier home owners more than that (probably less wealthy on average) renter.
I assumed it would be wholesale prices. I guess cracking and refining oil yourself, or brewing biofuel, would be the analogue to backyard solar or whatever.
Part of the point is that “home gas” for local commutes and such is hilariously impractical, whereas that’s not the case for EVs.
Farmers are able to get diesel fuel without paying the tax. It’s dyed red if I recall correctly. It wasn’t super uncommon for a farmer to get his truck inspected to make sure he wasn’t driving on the roadways with untaxed fuel.
Only $130? Ohio has been taxing EVs (and PHEVs that still use gas!) $200/year for 5 or so years now.
Ohio is still part of the United States, so they'll still pay the state tax and then would add this new federal tax on top of that, too.
Don't states handle registration? Why is this a federal thing?
Yes, but the federal government has access to those databases
Sure but a federal registration tax seems really weird. I'm not sure if there's a precedent for it
My view here is that a $130 or so fee should be paid by every car owner, gas or electric. Then they can reduce gas tax by $130 overall if they care to (or keep it as a carbon tax).
Ah yes reducing gas tax is what we need to do, let's encourage more people to buy more gas
Same fee for all cars regardless of propulsion is my point. Then debate how much gas tax.
So would this override states that have enacted EV charges or would they be double taxed? Texas already charges $200 per year for the same reason. This would make it $330/yr and only drive about 5,000 miles a year.
Everyone benefits from roads including people that don’t drive vehicles. Grocery stores get deliveries for example.
Just stop building them without adequate cheaper alternatives. Bike lanes should be a requirement. Save space for rail and bus, or take back some of the existing space.
Paywalled source
It's a gift link. You can either enable JavaScript and turn off whatever might be removing the gift token from the URL, or use an archive site. 99% of people can just click it and see the article
Hell yeah. Raise the gas tax by like 500% while you're at it. Make cars pay for roads.
This Congress isn't doing that though; they're just out to make it hard to switch away from gas
Not really, as transit and bicycles are unaffected. Cars are the problem; EVs are only marginally less bad (maybe, depending on whose lobbyists are doing the math).
They're a lot better in terms of greenhouse gases and air pollution. Switching to EVs doesn't solve social problems or traffic in the way that getting people out of cars does.
I'd be fine with an equal tax on motor vehicles, with adjustments for value or mass. But putting a higher tax on electric ones is just a way to harm Americans
Driving is expensive, societally, and tailpipe emissions are only a small part of that harm. Cyclists and transit riders should not have to pay to subsidize cars murdering children and tearing down our cities to build parking lots. Drivers should have to pay. Shifting the cost of cars to drivers incentivizes drivers to stop driving to save money, which is the goal. We should continue to tax driving in all its forms until the cost of driving to individual drivers adds up to more than the cost of driving to the whole of society.
That's fine, but to disproportionately tax electric ones doesn't achieve those benefits; it just increases the amount of pollution
This perfect be the enemy of good is a relatively extreme part of the biking community. The "tailpipe emissions are only a small part of that harm" is a bit of a stretch to. I would argue its the largest part of that harm but not the only harm.
Not if you raise the gas tax by 500% while you're at it 🤷♂️
