That’s over 10 years, right? It’s a lot, but it’s not a LOT.
1 Like
The study is interesting though.
If it was the same for all vehicles, that’d be a kick in the teeth for electric vehicles who are effectively not paying road maintenance tax at the moment. But maybe that’s the long view. In a distant future where most cars are electric, the tax on gas would not work very well and roads would still need to be repaired/improved so a mileage tax instead could make sense as far as pay-per-use taxes go.
1 Like
And we can’t trust your odometer so we need to install the GPS tracking device in every car just so we know where all our violent domestic extremists are and where they’ve ever been.
They could just raise some existing tax instead to make up for lost revenues, like one on electricity if you think the world gets taken over by EVs.
2 Likes
I think the world could also get taken over by rooftop solar, so that wouldn’t work. They’re not gonna charge me tax on the electricity I generate myself, cause that’s both outrageous and might be easier to “fix” than the odometer.
Another solution is to turn every highway into a toll road. Those will also require a “tracking” device of sorts.
With how easy it’s become to rollback digital odometers, it’d be a concern. It’s already not that uncommon so I imagine that if you had a mileage tax, the incentives would be even greater. But why would you care to capture GPS location when all you need is mileage? Make it report your odometer mileage each time you start and stop the car. Or like transponders for toll roads, make it read your odometer when you happen to pass under one of them (although that’d require installing a ton of them and would still tag your location based on where the reading was done).
Either way, I’m guessing determining what’s the cheapest solution that’s not too intrusive and not too subject to fraud is exactly the point of funding a study of this kind.
That’s just too vague to raise “some existing tax”. Any raised tax is not gonna be popular no matter what. If it was the current taxes on gas, it’d hit people driving ICE cars disproportionally. If it was tax on electricity, how would you separate electric consumption for other purposes than for powering an EV? People who have electric heating in their homes instead of natural gas would be pretty pissed off. So would people who don’t own any vehicle.
Just spitballing here:
Maybe it didn’t make a whole lot of sense to subsidize a bunch of rich people’s new car purchases while ALSO letting them off the hook for highway maintenance.
Don’t listen to me, I’m just talking crazy, I know.
3 Likes
The runaway inflation, currently being experienced by Americans everywhere, hits hardest persons of limited means because inflation is a highly regressive tax.
But inflation is a tax of choice for the Democrat party because it increases dependence on government among those less well off. The Democrats have a tax plan, and it is working well even in the absence of Congressional action. Given this success, I do not believe the inflation tax will be removed or restrained any time soon.
1 Like
So democrats engineered failures in global supply chains to boost inflation? And here I thought they were totally incompetent. Maybe they’re more capable than I thought…
Seriously, let’s keep the looney bin stuff out of serious discussion on tax reform proposals…
2 Likes
I take this slight to mean:
You do not believe inflation is a form of tax.
You do not believe inflation is under control, through imposition of controversial new policies which impact supply and profit, of the same administration which is attempting to raise taxes in a variety of other ways.
You do not believe inflation harms most those of limited means, forcing ever greater dependence on government.
You discount and have no memory of this same inflation mechanism operating back in 2009, purely I suspect in your opinion by coincidence.
You are in error on all of the above. Inflation is a tax and is, at least to a significant extent, under control of the current administration. And it harms most those least able to pay the higher costs it imposes.
I will not go to insults as I, perhaps alone, want to keep this discussion civil. However you need seriously to reevaluate your thinking on this matter. Real people are being harmed.
1 Like
Quite a few states have already started using additional registration fees, not just for electric cars, but for any car that exceeds median fleet mileage. (in VA, I have to pay an additional fee on two efficient compact cars because they average 35 mpg)
I don’t think it is that unreasonable to cover this whole situation with an annual road tax that is based on vehicle gross weight.
And if the concern is any risk of it appearing regressive (certainly not more regressive than an existing gas tax that impacts poorer people with older, less efficient, cars) – simply couple it with a matching tax credit that phases out linearly with income (i.e. no “cliff” situations).
The problem with a bunch of explicit toll roads is that I suspect that encourages congestion on the functionally-shortest routes, since “the long way” (that may decongest the primaries) will always cost more in a more noticeable way that the relatively small amount of additional fuel you were previously paying.
My region already has some pretty gnarly politics going on around one of the cities being effectively cut off by a toll-tunnel, where they were already a poorer city to begin with, so I don’t think more toll roads are the answer if you can collect repair revenue in other ways that may be less contentious (while having other benefits of encouraging lower-impact vehicles for consumer use)
2 Likes
Inflation is not a legal tax paid to the government. Where is it in the IRS publications? It’s just a penalty on holding assets in cash form no matter how you want to spin it. You can avoid it by holding your assets in things like stocks, TIPS, real estate, etc. that increase in value with inflation. Salaried people usually get even through increased wages - which are a good part of the current inflation spike btw. Labor shortages have pushed up labor costs which are then passed to customers.
But if you hold fixed interest debt, inflation is not bad for you since you’re paying it back in currency of decreasing real value. Hard to call it a tax then.
There are many sources for the current inflation. Supply chain disruptions, increases in oil/gas prices, labor shortages, pent-up demand from 2020 and re-opening of the economy. But I don’t see how Dems caused all these sources of inflation. They haven’t passed anything of note but the American Rescue Plan act because they cannot even agree among themselves LOL.
You can totally argue that they are looking at running higher deficits through their spending bills (infrastructure $1.2T and laundry list for $3.5T) and that’s alarming in itself for potential impact on inflation. But as of now, neither of these laws have passed and thus they cannot be the reason for the current inflation spike. So practically, what exact laws and policies have Dems implemented that have directly and conclusively caused the current inflation that even the Trump-appointed Powell swears is temporary?
1 Like
That’d be one simple way to do it that would not require invasive devices. It could even be rolled into your annual registration fees for your vehicle.
But it would not factor in variations in usage which the current tax on gas per gallon attempts to capture. Someone driving $30k miles/yr would effectively pay the same as someone driving $3k miles/yr despite their contribution to road wear and tear and the benefits derived from having good roads being very different.
If a year-over-year temporary spike from the usual 1.5-2.5% to 5-5.4% (and holding steady for a few months now) is “runaway”, then words mean nothing anymore.
I remember the days when some South American countries paid you for days work half at lunch and half at the end of the day. This was so you could go buy half your stuff before it inflated even higher by the time you got off work and could spend the rest. I think the rates were running in the annual 10,000%’s. I guess that’s “hyperinflation”, but the runway starts slower.
Either way, the spread between inflation and risk free interest is the most important thing. Back when banks paid 5-6% and inflation was 2-3%, you were not losing real wealth due to the monetary incompetence of your government as time went by. At worst, if you were getting taxed at 50% from Fed + state on your headline bank interest, you broke even.
Now rates are 0% and inflation is 5% and you have Bullard saying things like
BULLARD: I AM CONCERNED INFLATION RISKS ARE TO THE UPSIDE
BULLARD: HIGH INFLATION MAY NOT DISSIPATE BACK TO THE FED’S 2% GOAL
BULLARD: WE ARE GOING TO HAVE MORE INFLATION THAN WE ARE USED TO FOR SOME TIME
So don’t think the 5% is going away real soon. And worse, every year you’re losing 5% of your risk free assets. Where are they going? Basically the government is stealing them through a combination of printing huge amounts of new (electronic) dollars and thereby devaluing all dollars, and by the Fed taking policy and monetary actions to suppress interest rates artificially below where the market would set them. Normally that would be some spread over inflation expectations.
We don’t need a wealth tax if we can print all we want. And the Fed officials and I’m sure most of the politicians are buying stuff like real estate or commodities ahead of this, which benefit in times of high inflation since they’re not making any more land or oil but they’re printing trillions like there’s no tomorrow over in DC.
1 Like
I remember, in particular, Argentina. And “the Argentina experience” is exactly what Democrats are seeking to create here. It is one facet of their multi-pronged effort to weaken our country.
Most intelligent people, by now with extra time to consider things, have realized Biden’s proposed tax changes will seriously impact lower and middle income Americans, not only those earning $400,000 and more. The corporate tax increases alone will simply be passed on creating still more inflation, which clearly is a tax.
Democrats would never admit to increasing taxes on Americans least able to pay. But that is precisely what they are seeking to accomplish. The wealthy, which includes especially Democrat snobs, will be fine. The rest of us will suffer and the country will, on the whole, be much worse off.
Just thinking out loud … If we go to a mileage tax, does the gasoline tax remain as well. So those using gas pay double? Sort of a “sin tax” like cigarettes for still using gas and polluting the environment. Not advocating this, just looking long-term how I could see this play out.
Unlikely to pay double. I think CA collects higher annual registration fees for EVs than for ICEs to make up for the lost gas tax. So in a sense you can apply varying mileage tax to hybrids and EVs only.
That wouldn’t sound fair either. At least not now where only like 2% of the vehicles are EVs.
They could make it an annual check, maybe when you get your registration renewed. If your car has an ICE, then they’d know you’ve essentially already paid. If you have an EV, then you’d owe the mileage tax. But then what would they do for hybrids like a Chevy Volt since they wouldn’t know which miles you ran on gasoline vs. electricity.
They could also do away with the tax on gasoline and just have the mileage tax. Doesn’t matter what you’re running on, you’ll pay in proportion of your use of the road infrastructure. But then it’d remove incentives for gas/electric efficiency.
The kabuki theater is much in the news now. Here are the actual numbers. The discrepancy the last few years is due to hijinks in the last “debt ceiling” agreement.
Suspending the debt ceiling should never have happened. Either we get rid of it completely or we raise it annually as needed.
But the 2018 suspension makes no sense at all. It did not prevent us from taking on massive amounts of debt in 2019-2020, it just created a situation where there was effectively no debt ceiling and free borrowing without limit. We see how that went in 2019-2020.
It’s bleeping rich IMO for the GOP to only now rail about the debt level after pushing the debt ceiling suspension and going to that well freely for 2 years under rules that the Dems - who never seem concerned about debt - were happy to endorse. Now Dems will have to raise it and maybe they’ll reconsider next time agreeing on suspension nonsense.
2 Likes