Featured Illinois Bill Proposes $1000/ Year EV Registration

Are you dying or suffering from Alsheimer's or........ I forgot. What did you say? Never mind, if you can't remember. I won't remember. What?

 

My DIL works for a company that tracks how many hours an employee works in each state and apportions her salary accordingly. She had to file taxes in 5 different states this year, once in her state of residence and 4 in states she had to visit for one day meetings. The difficult part was getting the proper forms for these non resident states. Of course she filed using paper forms so the states will end up having to process the paper all for maybe $15 in revenue. A money loser for everyone.

I get inspected every year and I am sure they read my odometer. I think a tax based on miles and weight is the simple way. And to take away the state to state travel issue, since gas and electricity already carry state tax, just give the tax to the feds and they apportion it according to the standard highway funds formula (which favors the red states, BTW)

 

Here you go.

 

How, pray tell, does the electric tax get into the roads fund? Your whole premise is patently ridiculous.

 

Koch Media Covers Koch Groups’ Letter Citing Koch Reports Opposing Electric Vehicles

A couple weeks ago we discussed the ongoing Koch effort to fight electric vehicle tax credits, and the many debunkings of their “factual” and rhetorical justifications. So excuse us for retreading slightly old ground, but we would be remiss not to point out the latest and starkest example of how the Koch network creates its own reality.

On Thursday, the Daily Caller “reported” on a letter sent to Congress opposing electric vehicle tax credits, signed by a bunch of conservative groups. Now the story makes it seem as if it’s a broad coalition of conservative groups presenting a credible argument, independent of any possible profit motive.

That is, of course, hardly the case.

As Ben Jarvey at DeSmog pointed out in his debunking, the Caller’s story went live at 5:10am- well before the letter could have possibly been delivered and press notified. So it seems that the Koch groups coordinated with the Koch-funded media outlet on the release of a letter filled with Koch talking points, in order to advance the Koch’s argument for a political change Koch Industries will benefit from.

This is one of the clearest examples yet of how the decades of supposedly philanthropic work the Kochs have done has created an entire ecosystem where the Koch’s interests are disguised as a larger ideological concern independent of their profit motive.

Lose any one piece of the puzzle, and they’d be hobbled by reality.

Without an uncritical media to broadcast repeatedly-debunked messages, no one would hear them, because few if any legitimate reporters still take claims from these groups at face value. Without paying people to spout those repeatedly-debunked messages, there’d be nothing to hear, because practically no one is willing to say wrong things repeatedly unless they’re getting paid to do so. And without the original papers from Koch-funded organizations or commissions to provide the talking points, there’d be nothing to say, because there are no independent or unbiased justifications for their policy asks.

By approaching their political spending holistically, and taking full advantage of lax enforcement of charity rules (thanks in part to a fake scandal they helped manufacture), Koch money has created an echo chamber that protects the Koch’s profit.

And because most of these “donations” can be used as tax write-offs, an the Koch’s preferred policies pretty uniformly hurt public health and/or average Americans’ wallets, those harmed by these policies are essentially left to pick up the tab a few times over.

But sure, we totally shouldn’t subsidize electric cars, per the Koch letter, because that only helps the rich. And that’s the last thing the Kochs would want, right?

 

To avoid any confusion, the above post is not a comment on the Daily Kos article linked at the top, it is the Daily Kos article linked at the top, only lacking quote marks or quote-/quote markup.

 

The article did not include any pics. I gave you the article itself. Let me know if that causes any problems with the Internet Language-Arts Police. I 'll be happy to listen to your complaints. I won't at all care ... but I'll make it look like I do just for your benefit.

Thank you for your time and consideration in this matter.​

 

How to Ignore other Members | PriusChat

 

I think Australia has the system where vehciles have a annual approx. $1000 fee vs. gaso tax. I believe this has the impact that people get rid of clunkers rather than hold onto a bunch of old cars in their driveway. Virginia we have high annual car tax but it goes to zero for older cars so our state system encourages older cars and used cars and less expensive cars.

The Illinois bill sounds like a non-starter at $1000 on BEV, but the key point is many Americans strongly resent Prii and plug-ins "escaping" car tax. While increasing fuel taxes is probably needed for roads, lots of folks will not accept fuel tax increases if high MPG cars get excused. Big conlfict we need to face up to, I suppose.

 

Well...on the bright side if you get a $4,500 federal kickback as well as a few hundred from the state kickback for a charger, then you'll be good for 5 years - which is probably as long as the average upper-middle class buyer keeps the car anyway.

Fun fact:
Most truly wealthy people probably drive cars like Priuses and middle-shelf sedans.
This is widely reported and has been for years.
10 most popular vehicles in America's richest neighborhoods - 10 most popular vehicles in America's richest neighborhoods - Pictures - CBS News

Of course......YMMV.

At the end of the day BEVs either make economic sense or they do not, and I always said that when they start taxing them aggressively AND the kickbacks dry up, then they will have arrived at that point.
The same phenomenon is expressing itself in the solar industry.
It used to be that people were screaming that [insert notional bad people here] were preventing solar from being more widely adopted.
Now?
Many power companies are starting to plant as many solar panels as they do power poles, especially since there's still some remaining tax kickback money left to slurp up.....and this is what tax INCENTIVES are supposed to DO......
They're not meant to be permanent.

As far as virtue signaling, the calculus is even simpler, and it's a function of people LIVING their convictions....and yes...including the backlash they provide when they're asked to pay "their fair share" of the road use tax.
However (comma!)
States that are swirling down the toilet economically cannot be expected to ignore the fact that people who are too poor to avoid taxes, and too rich to pay them are a slow moving target for new taxes.......like......upper-middle class penitential car buyers.

 

Any dedicated road funds out there aren't enough to cover maintenance and new work. Shortfalls come out of the general fund, which electric taxes go towards.

 

When people out West start figuring that out, then propositions involving gas taxes will probably start getting harder to pass....
IMHO, there's money being raised and spent for roads.

It's just being miss-managed.

 

Interesting I have to give that a read..I can tell you though why rich zip codes in Virginia do not have Tesla's...the annual car tax would be absolutely out of this world.

 

Or god forbid instead of fuel taxes the current system where fuel tax is there but the rest comes from a variety of sources such as
1. Grants
2. General sales tax
3. Income tax
4. Property tax
5. General fund

A mixed approach takes the concept that everyone benefits from roads and spreads it out.

Today 80% of Illinois road funding comes from neither gas tax nor registration fees, perhaps that is the least regressive approach?

I have no desire to see clunkers forced off the road because an old Honda HX is as much a clunker as an 80’s Suburban, if we want to motivate vehicle retirements it should be on big stuff and inefficient stuff first and focused on modifying the mix of new vehicle sales.

 

We did the sales tax approach in Virginia for roads. The rural repubs felt that gaso taxes are unfair to rural repubs. They felt it was more fair to increase sales taxes, selectively, on the more populous Dem areas, and the Dems agreed to that "compromise" in the interest of road improvements. So we have a bifurcated sales tax hitting Dem/pop centers harder.

 

A mileage tax needs to be accessed on all cars.

 

I say $0.04 is too much. Let's say you drive a Prius and get 50 mpg. And your gas tax is $0.50 per gallon.
That is a tax of $0.01 per mile. If you have a 25 mpg car (close to the fleet average) then you would be paying $0.02 per mile. You are proposing that a fuel efficient EV should pay double the fleet average. Why?

Most EVs get >100 MPGe, which would be closer to 1/2 cent per mile. You are proposing 8x to 10x. Why?

Mike

 

And due to municipal substation taxes which are on a per kwhr basis you are quite likely paying more tax as a percentage on your EVs “fuel” than a gas car before the added taxes being widely proposed

 

That's what I thought too; I was surprised looking at the spreadsheet in these DOT statistics to find that the most recent reported statistics (column AD) for the actual fleet currently on the roads appeared to be:

• Light-duty, short wheel base: 10.2 (AD4)
• Light-duty, long wheel base: 7.4 (AD5)
• Light-duty, overall average: 9.4 (AD3)

Aw, gee, you know what? Those ain't MPG. They're km/l. So that'd be:

• Light-duty, short wheel base: 24 mpg
• Light-duty, long wheel base: 17.4 mpg
• Light-duty, overall average: 22 mpg

Welp, that kind of makes hash of my post #10. The proposed $1000 is even more unreasonable than I thought there.

It is trying to get a "fair share" out of EV drivers that compares to Chicagoland gasser drivers putting on 74,000 miles a year, or rural Illinois drivers racking up 117,600 miles per year.

Ok, really it's not that bad, because the same bill also proposes to double the gas tax paid by everybody else.

So it's only trying to set EVs at parity with urban gasser drivers who do 37,000 a year, or rural ones doing 59,000 a year.

I can't help thinking that if "fair share" were what it's about, it would be around a fifth to a third of what they're proposing, so it would be in line with actual realistic annual mileage figures.