Featured Suspending gas tax

The issue with a federal vehicle tax is that I don't think the feds have the means in place to levy it. Registrations are state level. It can be done, but the IRS is already short staffed.

 

Getting rid o the “gas-tax” brings problems of it's own that will be hard to deal with.
First ... what if the oil companies only back off on prices only a little bit of the full tax if they back off at all?!? I’ve seen prices change by more than 18¢ overnight. Next ... how are people gonna take it come September or whenever the “gas-tax” goes back on?!? HELLO?!? ... Here’s your 18.4¢ up-charge back. I think that there should be a crack-down on price-gouging and record profits. ... ALSO forget any subsidies. TAX the ever-loving bageebies out of the oil companies.

But ... then again ... like I know I’m gonna be told. ... I could be wrong.

 

Terrible pandering to the masses. 18.4 cents amounts to ~$100 average gas savings over a year per car. (YMMV) $100 isn't going to make a lick of a difference in this 9% inflation environment. This is purely to boost democrats' standings in the midterms elections. "See I am not responsible for the gas hikes, I tried to fix it." Republicans will sign on because they don't want to be blamed for it, either. The media will hurrah the government for proactive and bipartisan. Rand Paul might make a symbolic gesture to stop it by voting no to force a formal count.



.... And we all suffer as consumers continue buying SUV behemoths and polluting the planet, all for $100 bucks... or ~$50 for Prius drivers.

 

Won't help much. It's a feel good jesture to the arrogant single person big SUV and truck drivers who denigrated small and fuel efficient car drivers just a year ago.

 

this.
it's political suicide to throw your hands up in the air and tell voters 'sorry, but there's nothing we can do'.

so you search for any possible means of persuading the public that you're accomplishing something.

 

What a great idea Brandum .... let's do away with all taxes & then just quadruple the fake paper money supply so we can pay for everything at another 4X the cost. That makes as least as much sense.
.

 

My pennies worth

in UK we have Annual Vehicle Excise Duty (tax) AND gas tax at about 30%.
Our roads are still not maintained correctly and in some places Gas is now £9.06 a Gallon (£2 per litre)
US VED will not help anyone

 

I'm surprised they're discussing it this early. I'm sure they actually want to wait until much closer to election time, kind of like the student loan forgiveness. Do it too early and all the hordes will forget about the bribe by the time elections come around.

Remember, never let a good crisis go by unused...

 

Sounds to me like Oil companies make an extra 18 cents per gallon because the pricing system is so crooked there's no consequences if they simply raise their prices to compensate for the lower cost to the consumer.

 

Gas tax is over 99% efficient and rarely avoidable (for long)

Registration fees on the other hand are very expensive to levy

There have been multiple sources that have done “the math” that private income tax costs more than the federal government collects with only the corporate collections being profitable .

So perhaps what you state given the immense bank & corporate kickbacks has been like this for 4 decades?

 

Higher gas prices are a signal to invest more in gasoline infrastructure and to use less gasoline.

We have a great case study from the 1970s and 1980s about what the government can do. IMHO they completely bungled things putting in price controls. That removed the signal to get more gasoline and reduce demand. It created shortages long after the real crisis should have ended. When production and price controls were removed, the price of gas plummeted.

If given this lesson the government (this is politics and economics) had rasied gas taxes to reduce demand say to $1.50/gallon, then it would be perfectly ok to create a gas tax holiday temporarily and it would give real relief. The tiny gas tax that has not gone up since. Some of that tax money could have gone to have a strategic refinery system with the government subsidizing excess capacity. As it is refineries have closed in 2020 and with gas prices and demand likely to go down in the future, there is no profit motive for refiners to over build.

 

Gimmick. Big Oil will probably jack up prices overnight so we feel almost no relief at the pump, and instead of money going to fix potholes and repair roads and bridges, it's lining Wall Street's pockets.

 

Don't worry Big Government is hard at work and great at solving problems!

IRS has backlog of 21.3 million paper tax returns, watchdog says

 

Got 93 premium

 

Thus proving that if a party with an aim of showing a government agency functioning poorly holds power in Congress long enough and deliberately underfunds and hamstrings the agency, it's possible to achieve the aim. In other news, if you aim a gun at your foot and pull the trigger, you can prove your foot is messed up.

It's an especially impressive feat of governance when the agency you deliberately hamstring is the one needed to fund everything else you do.

As John Koskinen put it, “I don’t know any organization in my 20 years of experience in the private sector that has said, ‘I think I’ll take my revenue operation and starve it for funds.’”

How the IRS Was Gutted — ProPublica

The IRS Is Wildly Understaffed, Which Could Mean a Hellish Tax Season

 

The primaries are ongoing presently. Trying to pump up their own, a bit. But I don't think it will help much. Let's say you can save less than 20 cents per gallon sans federal tax, but the oilers keep gouging everyone with weekly price hikes. Doesn't make much difference, and people drive more over the summer, spending ever more on gas.

 

If you combine aggressive interest rate hikes with unchecked profiteering of inflation opportunists in about 6 months you get a fairly violent economic downturn...

 

The number of audits of poor people <$25,000 a year income hasn’t gone down much

My view on the matter is that it’s a travesty to waste time and resources on folks low on the income pole.

Should be focused primarily on the $100,000 and up club and of coarse “illicit funding “ of a particular type.

And houses + gas get cheaper

 

Unfortunately, with their limited resources the IRS will have less success going after those that can afford a lawyer. The fund cutting has also helped out the wealthy donors.