I wonder if we could replace both taxes with a general carbon tax and just take infrastructure out of income and carbon tax combined. Decouple transport tax income from KMs driven entirely.
Both the EV tax and the ICE fine for parking in EV slots were mentioned in the original article. They are separate policies that seem to be conflated in these comments.
The reason why they are implementing an EV tax partially based on miles driven is because EVs cause wear and tear on roads, but contribute little to none to those maintenance costs through petrol taxes. This is why plug in hybrids pay a lower tax rate in their policy (as presumably they'd pay at least some via the petrol tax).
I'm not going to argue about whether it would be better to push that all onto legacy ICE users, but something or other will need to be sorted out soonish as they plan to phase out sales of new ICE vehicles by 2030. It will take a while to flush out the existing fleet, but it will increasingly be a problem of who pays for the roads?
Will it just be everyone who is too poor to upgrade? It feels decoupled from the carbon usage to propel the vehicles so you can't just jack the carbon tax without goofing everything else & subsidizing drivers as the electricity is fungible.
Eventually it seems like it will need to just be a road tax & be like registration + some miles & weight & whatever else driven calculation. + then also carbon tax the ICE fuel and the EV juice at whatever it is.
> Both the EV tax and the ICE fine for parking in EV slots were mentioned in the original article
I think the discussion just moved on that's all. I wasn't commenting about the fine,the fine makes sense.
My suggestion was to inflate general tax revenue with a carbon emissions tax on all carbon heavy activities (driving or other). Then forget the per-mile/per-litre stuff all together. I wouldn't even be against an infrastructure tax levy in my income tax.
Part of my enthusiasm for that is so that the absurd spend on car infrastructure is actually pitted against other options such as public transport projects and my hope is thst more public infrastructure would be built because of that.
But I am spitballing policy here, I haven't thought particularly deeply about a restructuring like that and it depends on where you live too.
> Won't 100% carbon-neutral electric 18-wheelers need to pay a share for the maintenance?
No, they don't have to. While a usage fee model is one possible model, there's no reason it couldn't be paid out of general taxes, like the income taxes mentioned upthread.
Which you pay for from a general carbon tax, which is a tax on all carbon generating activities. I probably didn't make that clear sorry. Essentially I am saying infrastructure should come out of the general budget and we shouldn't fuss with counting KMs at all. A carbon tax on all CO2 polluting activities would just inflate the general tax revenue and hopefully enough to pay for the infrastructure upkeep.
The reason why they are implementing an EV tax partially based on miles driven is because EVs cause wear and tear on roads, but contribute little to none to those maintenance costs through petrol taxes. This is why plug in hybrids pay a lower tax rate in their policy (as presumably they'd pay at least some via the petrol tax).
I'm not going to argue about whether it would be better to push that all onto legacy ICE users, but something or other will need to be sorted out soonish as they plan to phase out sales of new ICE vehicles by 2030. It will take a while to flush out the existing fleet, but it will increasingly be a problem of who pays for the roads?
Will it just be everyone who is too poor to upgrade? It feels decoupled from the carbon usage to propel the vehicles so you can't just jack the carbon tax without goofing everything else & subsidizing drivers as the electricity is fungible.
Eventually it seems like it will need to just be a road tax & be like registration + some miles & weight & whatever else driven calculation. + then also carbon tax the ICE fuel and the EV juice at whatever it is.