Does The Government Really Care How Much Gas We Burn?

[Grumpy Cat]

It's been a while, and I don't recall all the details, but remember the Obama plan to get the old gas guzzlers off the roads? You know, I think it was back in the first year of his administration.

If I remember correctly the net result was that people got paid a stupidly high price for their old junky gas burner so they could go out and get a new junky gas burner on the cheap. Real good plan....

If I could have arranged to play "Fuhrer for a Day" and call the shots for the government, this is what I would have done instead. It's not complicated.

1. Create federal sales tax rates for cars based on their mileage. The lower the mileage the more the tax. Let's say from $10.000,00 down to $0.
2. Collect all that cash from the Hummer, giant SUV etc., buyers.
3. Use that tax money to subsidize the cost of manufacture of high mileage cars.

So, the guy who wants to toodle around in his Hummer would have paid $10,000.00 tax on it and the guy driving his Elio would have bought it with no tax and $1,000.00 cheaper because of the subsidy. Somehow I think there would be more economical cars and fewer gas guzzlers on America's roads. Net result, we use less gas.

Detroit would hate it.
Ok, tell me why it wouldn't work.

The government only cares about one thing, more control.

 

[CrimsonEclipse]

This is a very important issue that many jurisdictions are trying to deal with. Electric cars are great for smog, but they beat the crap out of the roads. A Ford Fusion weighs about 3,400 lbs. A Tesla Model S weighs anywhere from 4400 to almost 5,000 lbs! That's a LOT of extra wear and tear on the roads. The Model X is even worse: 5300-5400 lbs. That's about 1,000 lbs more than my minivan.

How you tax should be based on what type of behavior you want to promote. If you want to promote fuel efficiency and a switch to electrics, then you tax gasoline. You don't need to vary that tax based on the fuel efficiency of the vehicle. Low efficiency vehicles use less fuel and thus pay less taxes. Alternative fuel vehicles such as hydrogen, natural gas, etc., could be taxed at different rates depending on how much you want to promote or discourage their use. Electric vehicles completely skip this tax, of course.

The purchase of new vehicles is (supposedly) already covered by gas guzzler taxes. Unfortunately they only cover cars, and not trucks, SUVs, or crossovers. Close that loophole and you'll see a lot of those vehicles become a lot more expensive.

There are CAFE penalties for selling low efficiency fleets, but they are mostly minimal, especially when the vehicles that don't meet the standards are generally already luxury vehicles, and the extra penalty barely registers on the sticker price. "Currently, the CAFE penalty is $55 USD per vehicle for every 1 mpg under the standard." So your $80,000 luxury car missed the mark by 5 mpg? That'll cost you $275. That'll make you think twice, huh? NOT!

But then you still need to account for wear and tear on the roads. This could be done by taxing at the tiume of registration based on the vehicle weight. This is where electric vehicle owners would get hit harder, as their vehicles will weight more (sometimes a LOT more!) then comparable ICE vehicles.

I understand that some jurisdictions have been researching charging tax based on the mileage driven. But how do you do it? Some places have proposed GPS tracking, but that raises all kinds of security concerns. Have your odometer read and pay a mileage tax every time you renew your registration? I just renewed my registration for five years. Five years from now will I have to pay a fee covering all the miles I've driven for the past five years? Ouch!

5000lb vehicle actually doesn't cause that much more ware and tear than a 2500lb vehicle. It's the trucks weighing in at 40 tonnes that cause the vast majority of the damage. It's a (log) scale where doubling the weight at the lower end has negligible consequence, but over 18-20k lb, any increase in weight has a massive change.

Frankly, the trucks should have to pay the vast majority of road tax.

 

[CrimsonEclipse]

In addition:

http://archive.gao.gov/f0302/109884.pdf

1 truck can cause as much damage as 9600 cars

 

[booboo]

5000lb vehicle actually doesn't cause that much more ware and tear than a 2500lb vehicle. It's the trucks weighing in at 40 tonnes that cause the vast majority of the damage. It's a (log) scale where doubling the weight at the lower end has negligible consequence, but over 18-20k lb, any increase in weight has a massive change.

Frankly, the trucks should have to pay the vast majority of road tax.

18 wheelers, and yes, those 18 wheels spread out the 80K lb max over a wide area, pay a whole lotta road tax.
If folks do not want big trucks mucking up their roads, they can buy local.

 

[Injunjoe]

Reminds me of years ago when trucks had a sticker advertising how much road use tax they paid. They took them off the trucks when someone pointed out that the people who bought what was carried on those trucks paid the tax because it was passed on to them in the price. Taxes have one goal, and only one goal: get as much money from the people as possible through any shell game you can!

 

[Sam]

Maybe the problem isn't new or more taxes. Maybe the problem is spending over a trillion dollars wisely. Waiting for em to start taxing us each time we open and close the door.

 

[Buckeyejake]

My thoughts on our government will probably get me banned from this website. Grumpy Cat has it right. The problem is this attitude has leached down to our state and local governments.

 

[McBrew]

If I remember correctly the net result was that people got paid a stupidly high price for their old junky gas burner so they could go out and get a new junky gas burner on the cheap. Real good plan....

You do not remember correctly.

The most popular car traded in during "cash for clunkers" was the Ford Explorer. The most popular car purchased under the program was the Toyota Corolla.

The average fuel economy for trade-ins was 15.8 MPG, and the average fuel economy for cars bought was 24.9 MPG.



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[xtspode]

Taxes. I do not like them Sam I Am. I do not like them on a boat, I do not like them on a house, .

A flat tax on what a person makes seems more reasonable. The pages and pages of taxes on cars, road use, tobacco, and every other possible item or use is still a tax. Just bundle it all up and quit trying to hide the way we get taxed. Plus the system gets so complex to monitor and collect the money, that lots of that money never makes it to the intended use.

I know that this debate will rage on, likely without being solved, but I still have to say it.

 

[CrimsonEclipse]

18 wheelers, and yes, those 18 wheels spread out the 80K lb max over a wide area, pay a whole lotta road tax.
If folks do not want big trucks mucking up their roads, they can buy local.

Yeah, I'm going to assume that you didn't read the article.