Gasoline tax

I don't oppose gas tax increases, I've been supporting them since before joining PC. But being a Washington State resident, you already know what happens with even a ten cent state tax increase. Any state effort to even partially emulate European fuel prices would very quickly put Tim Eyeman into the governor's mansion. A similar federal boost would be even more destructive.

My opposition is to your idiotic, selfish, destructive money grab of using the gas tax to fund tax rebates to other vehicles. Daniel's description is right on the mark.

 

You can't respond to someone elses post without calling them an idiot? What does your use of ad hominem make you?

 

If I state that a person has done a bad thing, or offered a bad proposal, does that mean I have called them a bad person?

If so, then our language has changed more than I had realized over the past half century. I'll need to go back to grade school to learn how to parse the new language.

 

Quoted for truth because frankly, it's the most intelligent thing I've heard all week.

Gasoline taxes are for one thing - construction and maintenance of roads. Should the gas tax be raised, perhaps to bring in the highway trust fund in line with expenses? Sure. But tell the politicians and special interests to keep their damned hands off the kitty for their pet projects such as mass transit, trains, street cars, and bike paths. None of that goes well when managed by the Federal or even State governments.

Mass transit and "alternative transportation" in a metro area should be a local solution, paid for with local taxes. Don't like it? Live on the other side of the county line, and don't pay the taxes. I know that's what a lot of people around here do.



(Directed largely at ProximalSuns):

With regards to gasoline being $10 a gallon due to $8+ of it being taxes... I think you're welcome to put your money where your mouth is and send a $100 check to the United States Treasury every time you put $40 of gasoline in your vehicle.

Because charging $10 a gallon for gasoline across the board in a barely-concealed attempt at social engineering is frankly disgusting. It would cause housing prices in the suburbs to crash even further, prolonging the recession we're in, all the while crowding people back into the cities that they left in the first place for a reason - they left because of the crime, the noise, and the taxes.

And before you attack my criticism of cities, I currently live downtown. I'm here because I rent and go to grad school full time, and it's convenient to have the school five minutes away. But the minute I am employed after school, I am moving outside the city/county limits. No way in hell I will ever pay a 2.5% city income tax plus countywide property tax levies which would bleed me dry before long

 

Thus the problem of the I wants, they want, but don't want to pay.

 

Of course. I'm realistic. I know we won't get smart, long term, pro-US gasoline tax, American public and politicians are too short sighted, too greedy and too weak to go for it.

The successful use of the gasoline tax in Europe, resulting in Europe's being 50% more energy efficient than US and US purchasing European and Japanese cars because of their better efficiency argues otherwise. Using gas taxes to pay for the costs of gas use, including promoting technology and behavior to lessen gas use and its costs is smart public policy.

 

The revenues from the gas tax don't come close to the costs to the government for it. If the government were a for-profit organization, they would need to raise their portion of the price of gasoline markedly. Estimates vary, but probably by around 2000%.

 

A Simple Observation:
When gas prices spike or gas shortages occur, Americans buy more fuel-efficient cars. The spike or shortage may last one to three months, but the fuel-efficient vehicle continues to reduce fuel consumption for about give years.

An Opinionated Conclusion:
Raising the tax on gasoline will increase sales of fuel-efficient vehicles, which is good for America in a variety of ways. Therefore, I favor raising the excise tax on gasoline.

 

Another benefit I've noticed on my morning interstate commute is folks are voluntarily slowing down ~ 5 mph . That has the effect of reduced gas consumption. Unfortunately, once gas prices start falling, people start speeding up again.

 

How much of that fuel tax is being used to fund tax rebates for other vehicles?

 

Where we agree is in taxing gasoline at a level commensurate with the damage gasoline causes to our environment and our balance of trade.

Where we disagree is in giving free money to people rich enough to afford today's expensive electric cars. We'd get more bang for the buck using that money to build public transit infrastructure of a quality that would get people riding busses and trains instead of driving cars, and spending some of that money on R&D to bring down the price of batteries so that EVs would be more affordable.

Note the difference: Creating a technology that makes EVs cheaper vs. giving away cash to rich people for buying the car they'd have bought anyway. I got a tax break worth about $300 when I bought my Prius, and a $7,500 tax credit when I bought my Tesla Roadster. I'd have bought both of these cars without the tax break. So the government gave me free money and got nothing for it.

I'll take all the free money the government will give me, but it's stupid to give me free money.

The problem with this is that it opens a BIG loophole for business owners to leave the assets within the corporation, untaxed, while they get to use them. Rather than taking a salary and buying a house and a car and a yacht, my company buys the house and the car and the yacht with untaxed money, and allows me to use them.

This I agree with.

I advocate a simplified but graduated income tax where there are no exemptions, loopholes, or deductions, but where the more you make, the higher the percentage you pay. The tax form would have two lines and a table. Line one: Your gross income. Table: If you made this much, you pay this much. Line two: Enter the number from the table. This is your tax.

Okay, we'd need two more lines: Line 3: How much was withheld or paid during the year in quarterly estimated taxes? Subtract line three from line two and enter on line 4. This is how much you owe, or if negative, ths is your refund.

 

My intent here is to end the special treatment of dividends and capital gains, returning them to the same tax treatment as ordinary income. Your simplified tax structure would do the same thing automatically.

 

It's pretty low-rent altering somebody's quote, you know.
I've never ever hit the "report-a-post" button, since I figure that's a third grader response, but I still think that it should be against forum policy to allow cretins to miss-use the "quote" feature.

"When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser." -Socrates

 

Ah, wouldn't that be a nice change? :rockon:

 

My apologies. It seems to be a pretty widely spread paradigm. It was certainly not my intent to change your meaning, just add my opinion to it.

 

I'll never understand the reasoning (or lack thereof) behind punishing hard work, long work hours, and/or a successful business.

IMNTBHO, a flat tax is the only fair, just and ethical method of taxing income, just as a flat sales tax is the only fair, just and ethical method of taxing consumption.

 

Apology accepted.
Posts are tricky things...much like email. They have the spontaneity of conversation with the durability of a written document. It's easy to get someone's meaning bollixed up without additional obfuscation.

Liberals have gotten a lot of traction off of the "oil wars" and "oil subsidies" stick because it meets all of the basic rules of good B.S.
It's simple.
It directs hatred and blame towards a 'non-you' opponent.
And there's a kernel of truth to it.

....a small kernel.

Rather than being contented with that...they always double down with impossibly large numbers and claims to exaggerate their position.

Oil companies operate at a profit. No doubt about it. Because of economies of scale, they're also big. No doubt about that either.
However (comma!) to suggest that the sole purpose of a military is to protect oil trading routes is juuuuust a little off. Assigning all of the cost of operating a military as a "subsidy" to the oil companies is just wrong. It presupposes that all of our strategic imports are oil. It suggests that we have no export routes that require protection. Also somewhat untrue.
We've had a military for over 150 years longer than we've been a net-importer of oil. The (basic) purpose of a Navy is to protect SLOCs or sea lanes of commerce.

Also there's the profitability of oil. Depending on whose B.S. you're listening to, it's either a nickel or a dollar a gallon. Choose your poison.
I can't say for sure, but I know what the government's (federal) profit is on each gallon of GAS. It's even higher than it is for diesel....AVGAS....kerosene....etc.
Ask a truck driver sometimes what they pay in road taxes.
Apple is by some estimates one of the largest companies, and by ALL estimates the most profitable, and yet they get a pass on the "big, evil" thing. So does Google.

So....there's room for argument on the "Oil Warz" and the "subsidy" thing. Of course....it's just easier to chant mantras and low word count slogans than it is to dig into an issue and try to get some facts, now isn't it?

 

Excellent graph, which seems to show government spending is out of line with history, and taxes seem high enough.

But some taxes could change for the better. The payroll tax is an odious thing, it takes away the most from the young that earn the least, with the promise that maybe someday when you retire it might not be bankrupt. There should not be so much concern about oil companies making too much money or the government not getting enough.

Importing oil is a huge negative for the country, but a tarrif or subsidies will not help. A straight tax on oil will reduce consumption in both transportation and non-transportation, but if this is simply pissed away then it does no good. A slowly rising tax of say $2/year per barrel of oil might be enough to reduce consumption. If this money is used for highways and excess used for fica I doubt it could do any harm to the economy, and may help us in two critical needs. Poor families would pay more for gas and for food, but would spend less on fica. Let's slash and burn the military budget while we are at it, since the cold war is over. That may help align revenue and expenditures.

 

That seems unlikely to me. $2 per barrel is less than 5 cents per gallon. Gasoline fluctuates more than that every week. No one would even notice.

$2 per month per barrel might be noticed enough to drive behavior.

 

There is one theme in here that I'm not in agreement with. That's that gasoline taxes go to transportation costs. As far as I can tell, all taxes go to the "revenue" bucket, and all expenditures come out of the revenue bucket and debt bucket. That's it. When we are talking about gas taxes, we really are not talking about transportation funding, but just one of many taxes for general revenue. If there are exceptions, please point them out, I'm listening.