Taxing Electrical Vehicle Drivers
A friend sent me this piece on taxing electric vehicle drivers, and wrote:
I haven’t seen anything that has gotten me this angry in a while. This is insane! And the comments so far seem to be reflective instead of saying how irresponsible this is. It is obvious to me that the authorities who, understandably, need road money have to go back to the vehicle manufacturers, the military (who encouraged the Interstate Highway system), the utilities and the oil companies. But making the electric car owners pay extra, after they’ve paid their electric bill? Maybe 40 years from now after the encouragement period is over.
I don’t think this approach makes sense either, though, for whatever reason, it doesn’t make me angry. It would be great if we as a nation had a sincere interest in reducing our dependence on oil – for any number of reasons: national security, climate change, human health, etc. — but we don’t. We have no energy policy at all, let alone a progressive one that heads us all in the right direction across any of these different parameters.
Let’s suppose that you’re Paul Scott, my friend whom I interviewed on the 2GreenEnergy Video Report and hosted on a panel discussion at the Alt Car Expo in Santa Monica a few years ago. He recently traded in his Toyota Rav-4 Electric, which he had driven since he bought it in the late 1990s, in favor of a Nissan LEAF, which he charges with the solar PV on his roof. Personally, I would think we would want to encourage, rather than tax this type of thinking and behavior. But we just don’t; it’s just not part of our national consciousness at this point in time.
I personally feel they should just up the gas tax to make up the difference. That creates incentive to move in the right direction. As less gas is bought keep upping the gas tax to compensate. Those that choose to keep driving petrol burners will simply pay more. If they drive gas hogs they will pay more.
Now to address the article.
Charging true hybrids a tax based on miles isn’t fair as they are already still paying the regular gas tax on the gas they do buy so this amounts to additional taxation over the regular gas tax, which is unfair.
The author makes the argument that using GPS or Cell phone technology won’t work because of privacy concerns as well as not being able to determine whether miles are being driven on state, out of state or private roads. The current method of taxing fuel can’t tell what kinds of roads are driven on either.
Taxing registration doesn’t work because it would mean that people like my wife who drive 2.6 miles round trip to work 3 times a week, a total of 406.5 miles a year in her Kia Rio, would be paying the same amount as someone that drives 15,000 miles a year in a monster truck. This is not fair at all.
In PA our yearly mileage is recorded at the yearly safety inspection. That means the state knows how many miles were driven. The fairest tax I can think of would be a tax based on miles driven and weight. Perhaps something like a penny a mile per 1000lbs of weight. Since the gas tax is theoretically for fixing the roads, taking the vehicle weight into account seems reasonable as heavier vehicles wear the road more. Current fuel tax kind of takes this into account as heavier vehicles have lower mileage so will pay higher tax.
PA state gas tax is 32.3 cents per gallon and federal tax is 18.4 cents per gallon for a total of 50.7 cents per gallon.
As an example let’s take my Mercedes. Granted it’s a diesel but let’s assume gas for this example. It gets 22MPG so 50.7/22 is about 2.3 cents per mile. Curb weight is 3,744lbs. By my tax rate I would pay 3 cents per mile traveled. My Volvo’s curb weight is 3,082lbs and it also gets 22MPG so the tax rate would be the same for that.
By comparison, A 2011 Dodge Ram 2500 has a curb weight between 5,532 and 7,281 pounds depending on options so 5-7 cents per mile. At about 15MPG the gas tax would be 50.7/15 or 3.4 cents per mile.
A Toyota Prius is about 2921lbs so 2 cents a mile. At 48MPG highway that would be 50.7/48 which is 1.06 cents per mile gas tax.
Anyway, if they are going to change the tax then something like what I am proposing no longer relies on the type of fuel used and seems pretty fair to everyone.
These vehicles – which effectively let you burn coal to move your car rather than burning oil – weigh far more than similarly sized ICE cars… which means they do more damage to the road.
The fact that they are harming the roads more than regular cars in some mis-directed attempt to harm the environment more should – obviously – result in them paying more per mile driven to fix the roads.
I don’t see what is controversial about this.
Taxes and the Public Commons – either of these subjects alone justifies an independent dedicated blog.