Featured EV road tax fees

Past posts of mine on the subject are all for a simple odometer reading.
I think taking a reading and billing for those miles is simpler and fairer than billing every one based on some average annual miles, then hoping those that drove more than that would chose to pay for them, and making those that drove less have to make an effort to get their money back.

 

Nothing in government is simple or cheap.

As an example
The Wisconsin gas tax is a run away success costing less than $20000 (incremental cost over sales tax collections) a year to administer while bringing in billions of dollars of revenue each year.
It's as close to automated as government gets.

Compare that to personal license plate renewals...
Our state has phone in, mail in, in person, or internet payment to pay license plates fees in the hopes of improving efficiency.
Yet despite this costs over 40,000,000 dollars yearly to administer and operate, excluding costs of new registration and commercial which is its own whale.

Our state generally has under 25% of cars going in for inspection each year. Most areas are exempt, new cars are usually excempt
The cost to smog for the customer is about $8 but the cost per car to operate the program is around $50 a vehicle .
If all 8,000,0000 cars the state would have to go in for odo reasons the state would have to make up that $42ish dollar loss and the cost per mile for everyone would go up.

Gas taxes as they stand punish poor driving behavior and poor efficiency choices. Yes you can buy a 20 mpg sub 2000lb car or a 70mpg one.
Charging a person a generic rate for weight would remove this and again certain classes of vehicles would get lobbiest involvement.
Gas tax is much more difficult to corrupt since it's blind to all this crap and paid at point of use.

Heck when Wisconsin was considering charging all "alternatively " powered vehicles $50 extra the accountability board figured it would cost a minimum of $150000 dollars to identify the affected cars, update software and procedures just to do it.

This is why I think something more akin to gas tax is needed for EVs, even if EV households paid a 1/10 of a percent road tax on overall consumption I think it would still be more affective and less ripe for fraud.

 

Aren't hybrids heavier due to the batteries? We're back to penalizing the energy efficient again...

 

Either way would work. But here is the difference.
In your method 100% of everyone has to get an official odometer reading every year, right?
In my method, the car owner "can" choose to do this. Or not.
Most people probably drive about the same number of miles every year, plus or minus 10 or 20%.
For these people where "it is close enough" they don't have to do anything.
If the estimate is too low they can just fix it themselves. They only need to adjust (via an official reading) it if the estimate is too high.
There is no real disadvantage to this because when the car is sold a final odometer reading it taken and over or under payment is adjusted in the final payment.

Let's not advocate a $100 solution for a $10 problem.
If a 50 mpg Prius drives 12000 miles in a year, that is 240 gallons.
If the gas tax is (roughly) $0.50 per gallon that is $120 per year. (Some states are higher or lower combined federal & state)
That is 1 cent per mile.
I think most people would be fine with over or under paying 10-20% for the convenience of not be required to have their odometer being read every year. They don't lose the money if they overpaid in one given year...it all gets adjusted when the car is sold or anytime they choose to have the odometer read. When they do get their odometer read it adjusts their annual estimate for future years for that car.

Mike

 

Have you checked the weight of the Prius liftback battery? Not an issue at about 100 lbs.
Meanwhile an SUV might be 1000 - 2500 lbs heavier than a Prius.

Mike

 

That might work for states without annual inspection. In Virginia, they already have an annual reading from the inspection paperwork. Using that should be even less expensive.

 

OK. I'm game.
How would you do this without a big government cost.

EVs use electricity the same as businesses and houses do. How would you separate the two without requiring new meters and special plugs, for example? How would you detect cheating? What if you have solar and are off grid?
Electricity is ubiquitous, you can't do it. (cheaply)

We are talking about something like 1 cent per mile for 12000 miles a year. Or $120 per year per car.
Design a system to collect that $120 without costing more than, say $5 per car per year...that is "like" a gas tax.
(For bigger heavier cars it might be 2-3 cents)

Mike

 

The weight difference among cars, including SUVs and pick ups, is too small when it comes to the amount wear they cause roads. Those calling for weight base either don't understand this or have another objective.

I'm fine with fuel taxes for now, but few places, including Congress, are willing to raise them. Which leaves roads and infrastructure going without repair or paying for it out of other tax revenue.

Inspections vary by state. In Pa, I have to get an emission and safety inspection once a year at a licensed mechanic. Some areas of the state are exempt from emissions, but not safety. Every registered car will have an odometer reading done once a year already that is reported to the state. Therefore taxing miles shouldn't be a major undertaking to the rest of the paperwork.

Sounds like Wisconsin could benefit from what I said in the other post on the odometer reading variant. "This might work for states in which inspections are less often than once a year. They collect a small amount from everyone each year to maintain a steady revenue amount, and then refund or tax more when the car is finally inspected."

For states that don't have regular inspections, I think a bigger question is why don't they.

As to taxing electricity directly for EV's, I can see some potential issues. The first is the fact that an EV doesn't charge at home. So the kWh being taxed may have nothing to do with cars use. Or the amount collected will be to small for the EV use because of charging elsewhere or grid tied solar.

To only tax people with a plug in, access to the DMV records will need to be given to the utilities with the attending increase of bureaucracy. Installing a separate meter for the car can be high cost and decentivize plug in adoption. Electricity is just handled too differently than a liquid fuel to make taxing it for road use as straight forward.

I've said your plan could work for states without annual inspections with odometer readings. Pennsylvania has annual, and NJ did back when I lived there. Assessing a tax at the same time is less costly than sending out a bill every year.

I now see there is another element of your proposal in tying the tax rate to the car's fuel efficiency. That will increase the cost of the program, because someone is going to have to enter the EPA ratings for all those cars. Besides, it is much simpler to raise the gas tax. That doesn't address BEVs, but their MPGe's are so high that the amount they would charged wouldn't be worth collecting.

If a per mile tax is going to be imposed, it needs to be a flat rate for all cars up to 1500 class trucks and SUVs. Most of the wear cars inflict on a road is from the miles they are driven. The difference in weight among these vehicles is too small for a noteworthy difference in road wear. Gas tax revenue is down because cars have gotten efficient. Going to a per mile tax, but giving efficient cars a break will solve that issue. It also ignores the fact that a Prius is inflicting as much road wear as a Camry or Corolla.

 

It's funny how people react to taxes, isn't it?

EV tax rebate?
...Essential

EV road tax?
....unconstitutional.

Gas Guzzler tax?
...saving the planet.

Yada Yada.

Proof positive that everybody loves taxes, when somebody ELSE is paying for them.

Personally, I don't really give a crap but it's illustrative of many things, including why you do NOT want dot.gov making these kinda of decisions.
Road taxes tend to be pretty fair and simple in some places, and not so much in others.

Road tax - Wikipedia

 

You don't need a gas guzzler tax. There is a tax on gas, and the guzzlers will get the bulk of it.

 

Just to be clear...I am in favor of (efficiently) collecting road use taxes for EVs.
But if you do the math, the typical EV will be paying about $100 (maybe $150) per year to replace the gas tax they are avoiding. If a state has 1000 or even 10000 EVs on the road it is more costly to collect than to ignore...for now. CA has, maybe 200K cars with plugs (but that is counting at lot of PHEVs which do pay taxes on some percentage). And the state already rebated me $1500 for my PIP and $500 is on the way from PG&E. I'll gladly pay for the EV miles I drive that don't use gas (It's about $50/yr).

But what I don't want is to create a big government program, GPS trackers, more agencies, more bureaucrats, etc because road taxes are way down. They aren't way down because of EVs and PHEVs, even in CA where most plugins are sold. The gas tax is down because of higher mpg, lower gas prices (sales tax drops), economic activity shifts or other reasons. Politicians need to do the math and show all their work before using EVs to justify a big new government program (probably being advocated by GPS device makers, IMO).

AND. It makes no sense for a state to give you a $1500 - $2000 rebate as an incentive to buy an EV...and then say we are going to add a new agency to tax you for $100 per year. Don't start the new program until you are ready to cancel the rebates. (Or put an income cap on the rebate so only lower income people get it as a new purchase incentive)

To the credit of CARB, they did create a big bureaucracy for the smog check program decades ago. Then it was discovered that making every car get checked every year was a waste (didn't find a lot of high smog producing cars). So they modified the program to every other year and not until a car was 5 years old. (maybe some other changes since then, but I haven't had to get a smog check for 10+ years due to driving a hybrid (exempt until just recently) and an EV (exempt).

Mike

 

Makes sense to me.
Apologies if it sounds like I was stereotyping you in particular, but it seems that EV drivers go fangs out whenever a new tax is mentioned, not that I blame them.
Everybody gets a little exited when they feel that they're being targeted by an unfair tax.

FWIW, I'm generally in favor of the dot.gov kickbacks.
Even though it's seen by many who could not afford new PHEVs and BEVs as another tax break for relatively wealthy people, We've seen a dramatic reduction in battery and solar costs even in the last 5 years.

Win-win.

As you pointed out however, some day the kickbacks are going to end and then dot.gov is going to want some taxes.
Pump, plug, or odometer.....they'll find a way.

 

ev's are like the internet. there should be no taxes until they are sufficiently established.

 

+2

One for bisco and one for Bob.

oops....make that +3

FWIW I think that PHEVs are close to viability.

The average/mean/median/mode price for a new vehicle in America is fairly close to the non-subsidized sticker price for a PHEV....depending on which way you like to bend numbers.
Volts are closing in on the magic <$30,000 pre-kickback price, and Primes are already there if you shop around.

Pretty soon PHEVs will make about as much economic sense as a garden variety hybrid, and the only reason not to get one will be the CAR, not the price of the car.
There's still a "hybrid premium" to consider with Priuses, but only people who do not care very much about money buy new cars every three or four years, so the premium is either payed for by the first owner and the reward comes to the second owner, or the original owner drives the hybrid long enough to pay for hybrid bits, much as a solar panel owner would after a time.

So....the REAL conundrum occurs when dot.gov is beset with a dizzying number of ways that its subjects are trying to get out of paying their fair share.
Bicyclists are my favorite, because they pay NO taxes at all, and they screech the loudest for expensive road improvements, bike lanes and are always whining and crying about motorists not seeing them and rumble strips on roads that they shouldn't be cycling on anyway.
I do sympathise with them on the distracted motorists thing though....


So.......what's a government to do???
I was vehemently against a PAYGO syystem, but in the end it may evolve into what works best once all cars are IP addressable, and some form of tiered use tax is implemented on non-connected 'dumb' vehicles.

Interesting times.....

 

I guess the EZPass system could be expanded. Add roads and include other vehicles. Perhaps even make it standard ( & mandatory?) in the US.

 

Interesting....and profitable too if you sell the transponders and work for the company that does the billing and passes the remainder of the profits on to dot.gov.

Simpler would be to just use a graduated use tax based on registration renewals, many of which already require odo statements.
Cheaters will get caught like they're getting caught for odometer fraud----on Carfax.
You can even keep the favorite role of dot.gov by picking winners and losers based on what they drive.....just not exactly where and exactly when.

It's not a perfect solution, but it would result in more money to dot.gov in the end and you would eliminate the concerns of the tin-foil hat crowd that don't want to be tracked everywhere they go with their smart phones and Tweeter accounts.

 

If the gasoline tax were properly indexed off of the true cost to maintain roads, and said funds were applied to the roads, the roads would be fine. The exception is, for new roads should also be budgeted for maintenance as well.

Also timing is everything.
Apply a larger tax when the price of gas of goes low would hurt less.
Wait for the price of gas to go up and apply a new tax, all hell would break out.

 

Hope I'm not repeating too much from threads past, but thought it might be interesting to get some ideas for how to calculate a road tax based on mileage x vehicle weight factor.

Some ideas for deciding on the weight factor:

@jerrymildred posted the link here previously
http://facweb.knowlton.ohio-state.edu/pviton/courses2/crp776/776-roads-handout.pdf









N(D) = number of passages to reach trigger value, starting from new road condition
D = durability of slab (inches of concrete / structural number)
L1= number of axles
L2 = 1 or 2 indicating whether or not the axles are in tandem (L2 = 2) or not (L2 = 1)

Their analysis in the linked case is for heavy trucks, but this should extrapolate for commuter vehicles.

Some interesting observations when running these numbers
-on a per vehicle basis, a heaviest trucks can cause >1000x the amount of road damage per mile as an average commuter vehicle
-for heavy trucks, the number of axles and tandem axles are very important and can decrease road wear by ~200x in some extreme scenarios
-a 6k pound vehicle damages the road 4.5x as much as a 3k pound vehicle (~Prius)
-there are far more commuting vehicles on the road than heavy trucks
-still, heavy trucks, in an economically fair model would pay the large majority of fees
-shifting to a model like this would upset some interests, such as the trucking industry
-certainly @Trollbait can weigh in here and maybe suggest how much more it would cost the trucking industry