alt Hacker NewsZeroing out the gas tax aside, the EV tax makes _some_ sense.
Gas taxes provide the revenue that help pay for road maintenance and the rest of the infrastructure that cars use. Gas taxes made sense -- the more you drive, the more you chip in to keep the road system going.
That infrastructure still needs to exist, and will still cost money to maintain -- but if fewer people are buying gas, then the funds will dry up, even as usage stays relatively the same.
Replies
Offhand, the maintenance costs are something similar to a scalar that is the square of a vehicle's weight.
Rather than indirectly taxing via fuel it would be more proper to do so by said maintenance scalar (weight based) and the distance driven as the inputs. Presumably paid at the time of registration renewal or at vehicle inspections.
That sounds like a lot of infra change to setup, so there should be plenty of planning and cutover time.
States already charge EV registration fees for lost gas tax revenue.
The EV tax was only implemented because it's easy to implement both politically and practically, not because it's the best solution.
A better tax like others are suggesting based on mileage, weight, or usage (tolls) would have to apply to all road users, and require more rules and enforcement and be more difficult.
Are EVs that widespread in the US already that you're at the stage where you need to move from incentivising EV purchases to normalising their taxation?
Most of the states already have an EV tax. For instance, WA charges $225/yr for registering an EV. The issue is unlike gas tax, it’s not based on actual usage. And the flat fee they’re charging is way higher than the gas tax anyone driving a gas car with avg fuel consumption would pay for driving the national average of annual mileage.