I just got my "Current EVents" today and saw on V an article from David the moderator of this forum about ugh ah, "Road tax for EVs " My question is how much do I pay in road upkeep in taxes if my SUV gets 15 MPG? OK, let's say I travel the USA standard of miles per year of 12,000 miles at 15 MPG then what do I pay in taxes a year? Let us figure on the average for the past years of gasoline being about $3.49.9 a gallon for an average also. Not saying every state spends the money on roads proportionally and fairly. When I built my S-10 and got it registered in Taxachusetts they charged me a one time fee for not paying road / gas tax on my truck for it was 144 volt pure electric. Or I think a one time fee. We pay an "excise tax" every year on vehicles of any kind anyways. I spent some time in Georgia and believe they had the same or similar taxes maybe it was called Ad Valorem tax but still the same. It was hot today in 31 January 2012 here in MA so I drove my scooter to the store and left the truck home. I am averaging maybe 7500 miles a year on gas or ICE vehicle far less than the average person but want to gt an idea or some idea of how much I pay in taxes for the road. "State to charge electric-car owners $100.00 a year" might be fair but again it might not be fair. I have NO idea how much I pay using gasoline for taxes. Does any one else know how much lines Exxon and Mobil and what goes to road improvement? How do I figure road tax for an ICE vehicle? For most of us.
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"Excise tax" just means a tax on a weight or volume instead of the price of the good. Gasoline taxes in the US are excise taxes by the gallon, so calculating the taxes paid is easy to estimate - just estimate the gallons of gasoline you used and multiply by the tax.
The US federal tax is $.184 per gallon and the Massachusetts tax is $0.225 per gallon. By the way, the gasoline taxes in many states is higher than "Taxachusetts." For example in Pennsylvania it is $.323; West Virginia, it is $.357 and in Washington it is $.375. These reflect the road construction and maintenance costs that vary with the state's terrain and vehicle-miles driven, the amount and the existence of other revenue sources.
The annual vehicle taxes one often sees in southern states are called "personal property taxes" - usually just a flat annual fee for a required windshield sticker.
Don't complain about fuel taxes. Gasoline and diesel taxes in the US are the lowest they have ever been relative to the price, and by far the lowest in the world outside of a few OPEC countries. The higher taxes are why gasoline is the equivalent of about $10.00/gallon across the pond. And, these high gasoline prices are why Europe has better roads and highways, high speed intercity trains that would be science fiction in the US, good public transportation in even small towns, and cars that are better engineered and fuel efficient (but for some reason, are not sold in the US).
All the alternate schemes some states have proposed for fuel taxes to correct for higher fuel efficiency or EV are either unfair or just plain stupid.
Regarding the higher fuel efficiency/lower revenue problem, why not just change the tax from an excise to sales tax? Since the proportion of higher efficiency vehicles goes up as the price of gasoline goes up, and the amount of gasoline used goes down, the revenue will adjust itself automatically, via the price-elasticity curve for gasoline. For EV's surely, there can be a simple scheme for reporting miles driven and taxing by the mile.
The worst and most unfair idea I've seen is the Virginia scheme getting rid of the fuel tax and replacing it with a sales tax hike, which would fail in taxing proportionally, to the degree possible, the impact on the public resource (in this case public roads). Sales taxes fall the hardest on the poorest people, which in my city, often don't own a car at all; relying on the increasingly lousy public transportation.
It would seem the fairest system would be based on the wear and tear put on the roads by the vehicle driven. This would be a fee based on the weight of the vehicle and cargo, times the miles driven.
Anything else is just political drivel.
LCJUTILA
Very true. Of course, this would mean that the taxes per mile for typical loaded 40 ton 5-axle tractor-trailer combination would be 10,000 times that of a 1.5 ton car - I recall that is what the factors work out to be in terms of wear and tear when in the old AASHTO pavement design procedure is used, back when I used to do pavement-section designs.
That relation seems correct to me. It is the reason for Germany's heavy investment in a high-tech automated toll system for heavy duty trucks on the Autobahn system. The original intent of the income from that system was for it to be solely invested in Autobahn infrastructure upkeep. But as is usual with most, if not all speciality taxes, the largest part of toll income is now diverted into the fathomless pit of federal government spending...
My rides:
2017 Zero S ZF6.5 11kW, erider Thunder 5kW
You sound like a USAn. How much are the city's public transportation, or your intercity passenger railroads, supported by the German federal government?
City's public transportation is mainly subsidized by city and state, not so much the federal government.
Deutsche Bahn used to be federally owned but is now largly private und mainly must make do with what it earns, and does that pretty well actually. Only the tracks are still federally owned and funded to a certain extent.
Just some numbers from 2010: of 53 billion Euros of annual fuel and vehicle taxes only 17 billion were actually invested in roads and other traffic-related infrastructure. And those 17 billion have even been reduced in the mean time, leaving many roads and bridges to decay because there is not enough funding. So most of this road trafic taxation is used to fill other "holes" instead of the ones in the roads...
And just to put the wining of many Americans about high fuel prices into perspective: about 87% of the fuel price is taxes of various sorts around here. Thank goodness the electricity taxes for my ride amount to "only" 46% at the moment, split into a part to help subsidize renewable sources, an electricity tax for whatever, a value added tax for whatever, and finally a tidbit of infrastructure "rental" from the local town.
My rides:
2017 Zero S ZF6.5 11kW, erider Thunder 5kW