Minnesota EV and Hybrid surcharge proposal.

While I am against unfair flat tax on only EV/PHEV/HV, if money is needed to maintain roads and bridges, then we have to come up with a way to raise that money somehow. Denying flat tax on EV/PHEV/HV, on higher gas tax for everyone and any other alternative taxation will only lead to deterioration of our roads. Then only 4WD SUVs and Trucks can drive on those roads. Our local state routes are so bad from ice and heaving right now, I can hardly drive PRIME on some of them.

 

Right now however that is exactly what must happen,
the roads haven’t been funded properly since 1998 in my area, so they aren’t going anywhere and further no tax on normal cars has been proposed to fix the real problem.

the taxation methods we should use will not be an effective argument to block unfair taxation as they aren’t a talking point politically.

In my area there are around 2300 EVs out of 8 million cars
fixing how we tax a normal car is much more critical than trying to explain a complex subject other than saying no to current policy and further the EV tax will have no affect on road funding .

 

They already are in order to prevent sales fraud.

 

This is hypothetical but what will they do when just about all cars are EV? This could and most likely happen in the future.

 

Then and only then, a flat tax to fund for road and bridge maintenance will be a fair game!

 

When it comes to government it is better to NOT lean forward, leaning forward is what got us
1. Inferior TV transmission standards that couldn’t change before critical mass.
2. Inferior vehicle material sourcing and testing standards
3. All manner of Inferior consumer protection laws
4. Inferior health coverage and insurance systems
5. Inferior zoning laws and property rights
6. Inferior vehicle weight limit laws that mandate different axle configurations county to county, let alone state to state.

Best to allow the response to an issue occur when it has already become an issue, that is the only point when enough people are personally affected to actually have half a chance of getting DECENT well thought out law enacted.

predicting what you should or need to do when making laws gives us Poorly made laws that are unlikely to ever get overturned like the legal but dangerous coal tar dyes that get reformulated every 10 years due to gilded age GRAS legislation protecting untested compounds going into food and medication.

As unfortunate as it sounds,
In terms of EVs because their adoption varies from non-existent to 5% in very specific areas you almost need federal law on how road tax may be administered to all motor vehicles along with a very specific phase in Period based on local adoption rates,
this will level the playing field and prevent abuse via taxation in areas like mine where there are no EVs and likely will be none in the future .

 

Every car already pays a registration fee every year. You add a simple line item for each vehicle based on weight and number of axles. Maybe it is 1 cent per mile for a typical car. Maybe assume 12,000 miles for the year...thus $120/yr. If the person "chooses" they may go to an inspection station or other official location and get their odometer read, thus lowering their bill and adjusting their miles per year going forward. Or people can "choose" to add more miles, no questions asked, increasing their bill and optionally increasing their normal yearly rate. When the car is sold the odometer reading is compared and any delta is paid. Off by more than some percentage (maybe one year's worth plus 15%) and there is a penalty of 10% of the difference.

Sure people could try and cheat on this, but it is low overhead and everyone must pay something to get a valid registration.
I'm sure some people cheat of their registration, too.
The fact is that once we have lots of EVs there will be a need to have road use taxes.
If you bill it on an electric bill people can easily cheat by using solar, for example. And it would be difficult to separate EV usage compared to other usage

A flat fee is unfair to those who drive less.
A flat fee is unfair to those with smaller cars that do less damage per mile.
A GPS based system (which has been tested) is too much government.

Mike

 

Trying to blow up and rejigger the whole funding mechanism is a political nightmare that no one wants to take on.
There are definitely powerful lobbies involved. And as far as I can tell, none of them are powerful consumer lobbies.
It'll be interesting to see how much longer this whole funding issue can be ignored.

In the meantime I expect to see more of this divide and conquer type of fee hikes.

 

To a road designed to handle 18 wheelers, the weight difference between a subcompact and full size personal vehicle makes no noticable difference in the amount of damage they do. Weather contributes more to damage.

 

Our new Beltway I495 Hot lanes in Virginia are already looking ragged in some places. Trucks are not allowed on them but constantly we see renegade trucks on there. I presume it's possible the Hot Lanes owner/operator thought by keeping trucks off they could go cheaper on the pavement construction.

 

I agree. However, you can justify higher fees on bigger cars for other reasons, such as more pedestrian deaths. Yes, this was in today's WSJ. And it is prompting more intersection redesign, etc.

Mike

 

I can support other justifications for such higher fees, as long as they applied fairly. My sensitivity to using weight arose after Ranger ownership, and the fact that higher registration fees weren't applied fairly to it.

Such fees in Pennsylvania and New Jersey are higher on trucks. The justification being the heavier weight from the vehicles potential payload and trailer. Thing is, many midsize and large sedans are heavier than the old Ranger, and when car companies were okay with towing with a car, had a tow rating similar to the commonly equipped Rangers. So Rangers, driven most of the time far from their max payload, had to pay more than a sedan that weighed more when the vehicles had just the driver.

The unfairness got worse in Pa with SUVs. Friend had a Tahoe that was used to tow a 5000#, 2 axle horse trailer. Turns out Pa classifies it as a station wagon, and only charges the car rate for registration.

 

We are off topic from the unfair Hybrid fees being adopted in some states.

I would do my best to help anyone here on Prius Chat that was trying to fight it. You folks helped me with Virginia, I had posted some petitions and things like that back then. However, as with Idaho, I am not finding anyone here asking for help on it. So in the case of Idaho I just sent a letter to the Gov on my own. Tennessee also but I think maybe someone here was slightly concerned so I tried help.

After that, it gets into Federal Transportation policy, which I think might be the appropriate place to address these issues. I would not dictate what the states can do, but I would set guidelines including that picking out a certain models for scapegoat tax punishment is not valid if the model is not using an alternate fuel and the vehicle fills up at the same gaso station like everyone else.

PS- Here is the kind of meeting I sit in on (via webcast)-
Transportation Funding: Options for a Sustainable Future | Bipartisan Policy Center

 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.myarklamiss.com/amp/news/local-news/arkansas-highway-bill-to-impose-tax-on-hybrid-and-electric-cars/1816782939

Now Arkansas is passing a bill to fine (erm I mean tax) the 40,000 standard hybrids / vehicles with start stop and extra $100 a year and the 900 plug ins an extra $200 a year

All while the 1.3 million other registered vehicles in the state
ex “standard “ vehicles like trucks
will pay an extra half cent a gallon on fuel along with some index changes behind the scenes that the consumer likely won’t see.

Sounds fair and I bet the states EV sales will balloon like they did in Wisconsin

 

Really stupid as far as the Hybrid tax (assuming we are talking HEV hybrids).
That's a big enough penalty to kill hybrids in that state..why bother.

 

I can hear all the whiners saying those guys aren't paying their fair share of road tax. Then they get into their big diesel 4 X4 and roll coal as they drive away. Cough, Cough.

 

Arkansas saw its total annual new and used plug in sales dramatically increase from 138 units sold to an annual rate of 187 units sold, a huge 35.50% increase!

In a market with only 1.3 million registrations they had to take immediate action since .01% of the population wasn’t paying the average $38 of annual gas tax a typical economy car pays, That’s quite literally dozens of new freeloaders.
a financial burden the state couldn’t bare.
Ah the injustice


On a more serious note I wonder how many of the dirty dozen below (lowest annual new/used plug in sales) have special plug in taxes, at some point I should consolidate the annual sales versus taxes nothing like worrying about DOZENS of annual sales!


EV Sales State, Yr1/2 % increase /% of ev market
South Dakota 37 79 113.50% 0.22% 0.38%
North Dakota 40 39 -2.50% 0.12% 0.29%
Wyoming 41 51 24.40% 0.25% 0.38%
Mississippi 70 128 82.90% 0.10% 0.28%
West Virginia 71 113 59.20% 0.15% 0.17%
Alaska 94 85 -9.60% 0.37% 0.42%
Montana 99 143 44.40% 0.28% 0.47%
Arkansas 138 187 35.50% 0.16% 0.48%
Nebraska 206 260 26.20% 0.32% 0.75%
Idaho 214 241 12.60% 0.41% 0.53%
New Mexico 254 369 45.30% 0.47% 1.03%
Oklahoma 263 691 162.70% 0.10% 0.20%
Louisiana 270 283 4.80% 0.15% 0.33%
Iowa 280 433 54.60% 0.36% 0.57%
Kentucky 280 360 28.60% 0.27% 0.50%
Maine 298 464 55.70% 0.80% 0.71%
Rhode Island 299 433 44.80% 0.92% 0.91%
Alabama 330 381 15.50% 0.19% 0.44%
Delaware 337 401 19.00% 0.86% 1.36%
Kansas 384 452 17.70% 0.49% 0.93%
District of Columbia 405 398 -1.70% 1.87% 3.40%
South Carolina 469 562 19.80% 0.27% 0.67%
New Hampshire 482 788 63.50% 0.89% 0.97%
Vermont 514 871 69.50% 2.13% 1.58%
Indiana 671 933 39.00% 0.41% 0.81%
Median 855 933 28.60% 0.52% 0.91%
Tennessee 855 791 -7.50% 0.33% 0.97%
Missouri 870 1,150 32.20% 0.42% 0.83%

 

Even in Virginia when we had a Repub governor passing the hybrid tax, inexplicably he did that because he got a lot of support from the Dem politicians in my local area. I could never figure out what they were smokin. But we had resentment of the free HOV that hybrids got, but that had been stopped long before that.