Opinions: Gas Tax

sounds like we agree here, about as much as congress.

 

Actually I like the idea raised here about taxing the # of miles driven each year at registration renewal time. To me, that makes the most sense. The state could even keep some gas taxes around as well (maybe without raising them), as a way to encourage people to make the shift to EV and other cleaner fuel sources (so they're not taxed as much). Just taxing every vehicle sale instead is pretty unfair -- should be at least partially based on usage, as it has been with the gas tax.

The only problem would be how to implement. Self-reporting would be a joke (those who drive 15,000 miles a year would claim driving 3,000 miles). And you can't suddenly engineer a requirement that all vehicles (new and old, from motorcycles to cars to freight trucks) have a chip in them that you'd plug into to report mileage.

Maybe some sort of kiosk where people could drive up and either (a) take a picture with the kiosk's equipment, or (b) have the kiosk manned by staff (like a toll booth). The employee need only quickly glance inside, take a picture, then type in the miles driven and license plate, once a year, at renewal time. To encourage people to do so, you could even set a very high default renewal price (say $800) for those who don't have their mileage checked), and when people drive up to have their real mileage logged, the renewal would go down to $185 or whatever your usage was for the year.

Of course some would claim "invasion of privacy!" that the state has no right to know how many miles someone drives, but to me this is the best and fairest idea I've heard so far.

As for out-of-state drivers, there's no way to collect except at public chargers/public gas stations (Chargepoint could collect, since that's electricity meant for roads) or car rental places.

 

The way I see it, a charge for miles driven by vehicle weight class would be the fairest solution. But that probably will never be implemented or impossible to implement.

 

By single I simply meant a 'single' tax for all cars. "use tax" is a general term for a tax paid for by the user of a product/service. So those that drive on the roads would pay for them.

I like the alternative approach you suggested in that it would more accurately capture where the miles are driven and exactly how many miles. However, the implementation of it would, IMO, cost more than the accuracy is worth.

 

Self reporting of mileage can work by pointing out that when a car is sold or salvaged, the odometer will be checked. If the odometer value is significantly off from the previous miles, the seller is subject to a 'late road tax' and 'fine'.

Since so few do their own oil and tire changes, service companies could also report the VIN and odometer readings. This could provide a cross-check to owner reported values. Like IRS audits, you don't have to survey all, just the ones that seem to have unusually low miles.

I'm also a fan of letting the States be the experiment so they can adjust their annual, mileage, and gas taxes:

• oil/gasoline exporting states -> minimum gas taxes with higher annual and mileage tax to deal with vehicles that support oil/gasoline production.
• oil/gasoline importing states -> maximum gas taxes with lower annual and mileage tax to avoid transferring revenue from the gas purchase.

Bob Wilson

 

Which is fine, I like promoting efficiency too.
By treating all cars the same, I don't mean charge all cars the same tax.
I do mean subject all vehicles to the same formula.

The formula should take into account weight and miles driven.
If our society/government decides we should also promote vehicle efficiency using the road tax, incorporate a vehicle efficiency factor as well.
For example, if the average vehicle gets 20 MPGe, a vehicle that gets 20% better than that pays 1% less tax. This was purely an example, you could make the ratio whatever.
Instead of MPGe you could use Joules/mile or any other measurement that is the same regardless of fuel type.

 

I follow efficiency closely and some EVs are real dogs.

Bob Wilson

 

In Washington state we have to have an emissions inspection in order to renew the car tabs. They already plug into the OBD port so reading the mileage would be a simple addition to the inspection process. Miles and weight are the fairest way to tax. I would add that we have high gas taxes but no income tax. It is a pay-me-now-or-pay-me-later situation. Paying for state services like road maintenance is what we have to do.

 

That is partially correct. In Washington, only five counties require an emissions inspection. 2009 and newer cars are exempt, and two cars are exempt regardless of the year. They are the Toyota Prius and the Honda Insight. I live across the water from Seattle, so no emissions check in my County. Also, one of my vehicles has a permanent license, so they couldn't get that one either. I am assuming that it would not be cost effective to set up a bureaucracy to check the mileage of the small percentage of plug-in hybrids or electric vehicles.

 

Using: Fuel Economy

	MPGe	model
1	136	2017 Hyundai Ioniq Electric
2	124	2017 BMW i3 BEV (60 Amp-hour battery)
3	119	2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV
4	119	2017 Volkswagen e-Golf
5	118	2017 BMW i3 BEV (94 Amp-hour battery)
6	112	2017 Nissan Leaf
7	112	2017 Fiat 500e
8	112	2017 Mitsubishi i-MiEV
9	107	2017 Ford Focus Electric
10	105	2017 Kia Soul Electric
11	104	2017 Tesla Model S AWD - 90D
12	104	2017 Tesla Model S AWD - 60D
13	103	2017 Tesla Model S AWD - 75D
14	102	2017 Tesla Model S AWD - 100D
15	99	2017 Tesla Model S (60 kW-hr battery pack)
16	98	2017 Tesla Model S (75 kW-hr battery pack)
17	98	2017 Tesla Model S AWD - P100D
18	95	2017 Tesla Model S AWD - P90D
19	93	2017 Tesla Model X AWD - 75D
20	93	2017 Tesla Model X AWD - 60D
21	92	2017 Tesla Model X AWD - 90D
22	89	2017 Tesla Model X AWD - P90D
23	86	2017 Tesla Model X AWD - P100D
24	84	2017 Mercedes-Benz B250e
25	72	2017 BYD e6

The heavier, larger vehicles have proportionally lower MPGe and at 72 MPGe, the "2017 BYD e6" has exceptionally low numbers. From an architecture standpoint, the Tesla cylindrical cells have a lower energy density (i.e., kWh / kg) compared to prismatic cells that are often built as modules. This increases the weight increases rolling drag and inertial losses (i.e., energy lost when braking during the EPA tests.)

To get over 200 mile range, the car has to carry a large battery. However, if running shorter distances, the long range EV carries a weight penalty that regardless of charge, reduces the MPGe. It is one reason plug-in hybrids with a small, efficient engine continue to make a lot of sense. But hybrids with a transmission carry extra weight too. Of course aerodynamics apply giving the Ioniq BEV an excellent 150 MPGe highway.

Bob Wilson

 

I think it would be easier to implement an annual mileage check into most states than much of anything else. I am all for reducing gas tax, adding a road usage fee based on number of miles driven each year and calling it a day. Right now every proposal I have seen in states to recover lost revenue from hybrids and evs is a heavy penalty because it charges more than most average vehicle drivers pay for the gas tax. Last year I drove 6500 miles total, I don't drive a bunch so I would be heavily penalized in my average year. This year will be around 10,000 because I did a long roadtrip but that was almost all done on normal fuel at only about 60% better efficiency than a normal efficient sedan which wouldn't be hit with an extra tax. If you tax usage based on vehicle weight, then reduce gas tax you catch everyone and you give a slight edge to PHEV and EV owners for using other means of fueling their vehicle and reducing vehicle emissions in your state.

 

Both the Chevy volt, Bolt and leaf report all energy use back to big brother.

That is how rather simple sites like the one below can report neato statistics.

https://www.voltstats.net/Stats/Details/1579

I don't know if other EVs do the above but I would think they would

Meaning, you just log that energy info already freely available using the 33.7kwhr GGE metric to peg electric use to the per gallon gas tax in your particular home county.
The collection method could be when you renew plates or similar to the IL tollway pass system.

Perfect, no but most of the recommendations here would result in another million man strong IRS like agency tasked with collecting road tax.

Any scheme that requires humans to do something will be an economic failure, whether its manual checks during emissions or otherwise human reporting of miles or weight or any other nonsense.

For good of the country reducing the number of oversized single passenger 4wd land barges is valid for traffic and parking improvements, weight less so.
Reducing energy use also trumps any road worries.

So Efficiency must not be penalized, when it is, people just stop adopting it figuring it's a waste of time.

Weight is really only important above 10,000 pounds and again should only be a talking point on trucks, vans and commercial vehicles.

So I have no issue with them taxing the crap out of oversized 4wds in large cities so long as they leave an out to base 2wd manual xmsn vehicles that actually are used to do work instead of clog highways as a bling mobile.

Honestly Cali should have kei car laws like Japan , you can fit twice as many of those onto the same highway and parking areas.

Road funding is nice but it's not the real problem and could be solved indirectly even if road tax were eliminated altogether.

 

I have not studied the SC proposal, but it is not fair to tax no-plug hybrids extra. In other words, let's say you got 2 cars getting 25 MPG: Highlander Hybrid vs. let's say an aluminum F150, assume both get 25 MPG for this example. So the Hybrid owner owes $60 surcharge simply because the name "hybrid" is in the title. If legislators want to say owning a higher MPG car gets a penalty, which is OK (acceptable) policy, but then they should be applying that penalty evenly to all gasoline vehicles. As Toyota would say, the extra tax should be "technology neutral" within the class of cars that only use gasoline.

Plug-ins are a different story, but above I focus on "hybrid" taxes which are generally unfair. We killed the hybrid tax in Virginia for the reasons I mentioned, but it's a little less of an issue in SC. IN Va. we tax the hell out of cars each year, so the hybrid penalty is already quite huge here (due to the higher vehicle value car tax).

 

My wonderful (budget crisis) state just passed an electric vehicle tax in March this year. Full EV is $100 annually and a plug-in hybrid is $30 annually. Like this is really going to make a difference to the state budget.

We've been on the edge of having to install extra smog protections on gas pumps, etc. which is very expensive. So why not give the EV & hybrid owners credit for helping to prevent that from happening. Yeah, right.