At some point they do need to replace the gas tax they use to fund road related things. Would be nice to see some discussion about what the best way to do it is, though for a first pass I guess this is fine?
That varies by state. In Georgia it is $20 plus a mailing fee of $1 for the tag itself. My electric car has an over $200 registration fee for the same reasons that are being proposed. I’d need to drive a hilarious distance every year to be on even terms with the gas taxes paid to the state.
On the bright side I pay 1/3 the cost for gas per mile, so there’s still a lot of financial incentive to stick with my EV.
True. Also, I don't want to be a Debbie Downer, but since EVs are usually around 25% heavier than ICE vehicles, they are actually harder on roads than equivalent gasoline vehicles. And it gets worse, the damage to roads scales roughly with the fourth power of axle weight (per the AASHTO “fourth power law”). So even a small increase in weight leads to a lot more wear.
By this logic, we should be putting a higher tax on commercial vehicles then. Except the proposed bill exempts commercial vehicles, so...
In Virginia, I pay a lot higher rate for my EV than my wife does for her ICE vehicle. Which, I agree with another comment that I may be paying more than if I was paying the gas tax, but I understand the reason for it and don't have a problem paying for it. That being said, VA does have a program in place for the rate to be based on "use" (or mileage), but I haven't fully investigated that yet.
I wouldn't have an issue with a more Use based kind of tax for ALL vehicles as long as the money is specifically keyed to infrastructure (ie roads) spending and not a pot of gold for other programs to take from.
However, where this proposed bill really grinds my gears is that they're proposing having it pegged to inflation, which seems no problem for them to do, yet they haven't figured out how to peg the Minimum Wage to inflation yet, so...
The fourth power law also means that cars represents a near negligible amount of wear and tear compared to trucks. Following the fourth power law, semi-trucks should be taxed over 160x more per mile driven than your average car.
What's the intuition behind fourth power? Looks like it was mainly derived from experimental testing but there should be some physical explanation as to why we'd expect 4th power right (e.g. you can have some intuition for square/inverse-square laws based on arguments of surface area). Is it really 4th power, or is it the artifact of curve fitting?
"At some point", yes. This isn't an attempt to bring in funding for roads, it's a way to remove every EV incentive they can, because somehow EV's have become a political issue. We have people who don't even know what head gasket is, but somehow have BIG opinions on EV and ICE vehicles.
It's not that it is too complicated. It is that it is not possible.
No matter what flat amount you pick there will be people whose income is less than that.
I'm assuming you meant a flat amount because the article is about a flat amount. If you actually meant a flat rate, such as 10% of income, that is feasible.
However it is also pretty much pointless.
Many people imagine it would vastly simplify things but the difference between a single flat rate and a bracket system is a short paragraph and a table of N lines where N is the number brackets.
The complexity of the tax system is in determining what is subject to tax. To simplify the tax system you need to greatly simplify that. Once the taxable amount is determined a bracketed rate system is only trivially more complicated than a flat rate system.
Great simplification of the "what is taxable" part of the system probably requires giving up using that system to incentivize things the government wants to encourage or to discourage things the government wants to discourage. So basically getting rid of most deductions and credits.
Its those deductions and credits that lead to much of the complication. A deduction or credit or surtax is added to encourage or discourage something and it works for a short while. Then people find ways to take advantage of this in other situations. Then regulations are updated to close off those other situations. But they also end up blocking some uses that should have been allowed, so more regulation ensue. This can go on for several rounds.
Would getting rid of all that be feasible? Many, if not most, of the things the government uses the tax system to encourage or discourage are things it would still need to be able to encourage or discourage even if it could no longer use the tax system for that.
It's not obvious what other methods are available that wouldn't be more intrusive than doing it through tax tweaks. And they would likely still be complicated, so we'd just be moving the complication to somewhere else. I suspect that complication comes from having a large and diverse economy--it is a complication economy which necessarily leads to complexity in regulating it.
I don’t think I’ve seen “too complicated” comments for flat tax but there are regressive tax complaints about flat tax.
My state is essentially a flat tax (there are small increases at $1000 and $2500 and completely flat after that). A higher tax rate for someone in my income bracket doesn’t materially affect me as much (I will still eat just as well) as it does someone making 1/10 my income (who may be scraping by and occasionally not eating). The argument is that if my taxes were increased to lower taxes further down the income brackets it would make it easier for lower income taxpayers to get by.
At some point they do need to replace the gas tax they use to fund road related things. Would be nice to see some discussion about what the best way to do it is, though for a first pass I guess this is fine?
California is considering a mileage tax:
https://ktla.com/news/california/as-electric-vehicle-use-gro...
Doesn’t each vehicle have an annual car registration fee already?
That varies by state. In Georgia it is $20 plus a mailing fee of $1 for the tag itself. My electric car has an over $200 registration fee for the same reasons that are being proposed. I’d need to drive a hilarious distance every year to be on even terms with the gas taxes paid to the state.
On the bright side I pay 1/3 the cost for gas per mile, so there’s still a lot of financial incentive to stick with my EV.
Tennessee also introduced a $100 annual fee that includes plug-in hybrids.
True. Also, I don't want to be a Debbie Downer, but since EVs are usually around 25% heavier than ICE vehicles, they are actually harder on roads than equivalent gasoline vehicles. And it gets worse, the damage to roads scales roughly with the fourth power of axle weight (per the AASHTO “fourth power law”). So even a small increase in weight leads to a lot more wear.
By this logic, we should be putting a higher tax on commercial vehicles then. Except the proposed bill exempts commercial vehicles, so...
In Virginia, I pay a lot higher rate for my EV than my wife does for her ICE vehicle. Which, I agree with another comment that I may be paying more than if I was paying the gas tax, but I understand the reason for it and don't have a problem paying for it. That being said, VA does have a program in place for the rate to be based on "use" (or mileage), but I haven't fully investigated that yet.
I wouldn't have an issue with a more Use based kind of tax for ALL vehicles as long as the money is specifically keyed to infrastructure (ie roads) spending and not a pot of gold for other programs to take from.
However, where this proposed bill really grinds my gears is that they're proposing having it pegged to inflation, which seems no problem for them to do, yet they haven't figured out how to peg the Minimum Wage to inflation yet, so...
The fourth power law also means that cars represents a near negligible amount of wear and tear compared to trucks. Following the fourth power law, semi-trucks should be taxed over 160x more per mile driven than your average car.
What's the intuition behind fourth power? Looks like it was mainly derived from experimental testing but there should be some physical explanation as to why we'd expect 4th power right (e.g. you can have some intuition for square/inverse-square laws based on arguments of surface area). Is it really 4th power, or is it the artifact of curve fitting?
"At some point", yes. This isn't an attempt to bring in funding for roads, it's a way to remove every EV incentive they can, because somehow EV's have become a political issue. We have people who don't even know what head gasket is, but somehow have BIG opinions on EV and ICE vehicles.
For additional comments see the earlier submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43846005
All vehicles should be taxed annually based on GVWR and distance driven without exceptions.
[flagged]
It's not that it is too complicated. It is that it is not possible.
No matter what flat amount you pick there will be people whose income is less than that.
I'm assuming you meant a flat amount because the article is about a flat amount. If you actually meant a flat rate, such as 10% of income, that is feasible.
However it is also pretty much pointless.
Many people imagine it would vastly simplify things but the difference between a single flat rate and a bracket system is a short paragraph and a table of N lines where N is the number brackets.
The complexity of the tax system is in determining what is subject to tax. To simplify the tax system you need to greatly simplify that. Once the taxable amount is determined a bracketed rate system is only trivially more complicated than a flat rate system.
Great simplification of the "what is taxable" part of the system probably requires giving up using that system to incentivize things the government wants to encourage or to discourage things the government wants to discourage. So basically getting rid of most deductions and credits.
Its those deductions and credits that lead to much of the complication. A deduction or credit or surtax is added to encourage or discourage something and it works for a short while. Then people find ways to take advantage of this in other situations. Then regulations are updated to close off those other situations. But they also end up blocking some uses that should have been allowed, so more regulation ensue. This can go on for several rounds.
Would getting rid of all that be feasible? Many, if not most, of the things the government uses the tax system to encourage or discourage are things it would still need to be able to encourage or discourage even if it could no longer use the tax system for that.
It's not obvious what other methods are available that wouldn't be more intrusive than doing it through tax tweaks. And they would likely still be complicated, so we'd just be moving the complication to somewhere else. I suspect that complication comes from having a large and diverse economy--it is a complication economy which necessarily leads to complexity in regulating it.
I don’t think I’ve seen “too complicated” comments for flat tax but there are regressive tax complaints about flat tax.
My state is essentially a flat tax (there are small increases at $1000 and $2500 and completely flat after that). A higher tax rate for someone in my income bracket doesn’t materially affect me as much (I will still eat just as well) as it does someone making 1/10 my income (who may be scraping by and occasionally not eating). The argument is that if my taxes were increased to lower taxes further down the income brackets it would make it easier for lower income taxpayers to get by.
Nah, it's good to tax higher income people more, nothing to do with complications.
it's not that "we can't do that". It's that it's a stupid idea.