> Why should less efficient vehicles be taxed more?
Taxation serves two purposes: (a) to fund roads, and (b) to discourage society damaging behavior. For (a), we need to tax all vehicles, for (b), we need to tax some vehicles more than others.
> It seems like such a tax is regressive — rich people can buy new efficient cars more easily than poor people.
True. Perhaps the efficiency tax can be built into the initial new car purchase while the use tax is ongoing (those old cars will eventually fall apart or fail an emissions test anyways and be taken off the road). Anyways, these things can be worked out.
> the solution even though people won't like it is to put a tax on fuel
There already is an excise tax on fuel in a lot of places. I can't say what that revenue is specifically allocated towards, but the tax exists nonetheless.
>My idea is to have a huge fuel tax, but to return it to each citizen in equal amounts, not use it for general purposes, so that people who really need to burn a lot of fuel can, but those who don't are incentivized not to.
Interesting. Have you described it in detail somewhere?
> Even simpler and more effective is raising fossil fuel taxes.
In general I agree with you, and that ought to be done for cars. But those small engines tend to be very dirty polluters, and it would be impractical to put an extra tax on gasoline meant for those engines.
A reasonable tax would be $50 to $100. The state is good at taxing in this manner, and the revenue could be used to subsidize some green project (though we both know the tax revenue will just be wasted, sigh).
> I'd even go and propose that cars over €50k should be taxed at a higher marginal tax rate than lower-priced cars.
> I'm not proposing to tax spending, I'm proposing to tax a good so that its price accurately reflects the negative impact on society it causes.
It seems like you're proposing taxing based on the price of the good, not the cost of the negative externalities. It would make more sense to tax based on some combination of the car's weight, footprint, engine size, fuel efficiency, and emissions metrics, based on use of the vehicle, as well as at purchase time.
A vehicle that's a luxury item, but otherwise comparable in relevant statistics, doesn't necessarily need to be taxed more heavily than a basic version of the same thing.
> Once electrics reach double-digit market share, they are probably unsustainable. They will probably need to find a replacement for petrol tax too.
I agree. What form would such a tax take? You could tax tires, which is stupid because it encourages people to buy less safe long-life tires, or you could roll it into property tax, or a VAT, or grocery tax, etc. Even a part of a sales tax could make sense, since logistics for the supplier is included in the cost of the product anyway. Logistical infrastructure tax makes sense.
> It seems like you're proposing taxing based on the price of the good, not the cost of the negative externalities.
Wrong. I'm proposing that to have the same economic incentive on a luxury version of a certain good you need a higher proportional tax to account for the flattening of personal utility curves.
And that's before we get into the fact that luxury vehicles have even higher negative externalities due to increased engine size, lower fuel efficiency, larger size, etc.
> Do you understand that for many people in the world, the car you or at least people in your peer group might drive would be the equivalent of a giant pickup truck to them?
Yes, I am aware these schemes would require reducing consumption for quite a few people.
> Who decides what a reasonable method of transportation is?
Society? But it has to be planned with long term consequences in mind. Are we prioritizing pedestrians over individual car owners and detached single family home owners or not, because the two are wholly incompatible.
> For example, the bus system is terrible where I live. Am I allowed to have a giant pickup truck under your scheme or should that be taxed the same as if I had a better mass transit system near me?
You are allowed to have whatever you want, just like you can have a $10M home right now, but society does not need to give you the streets and parking lots to use the giant pickup truck.
The mass transit system will come about eventually, but probably will take decades of rezoning. I think voters making this kind of sacrifice is realistic at all, people’s priority at the polls is which politician will allow them to consume as much as possible.
> How would you monitor use of my giant pickup truck to be sure I was using it practically in a way that meets your requirements for proper pickup truck usage?
Again, high fossil fuel prices take care of this, especially at marginal tax rates. Use a little fuel? Less tax. Use more fuel? Higher taxes. At some tax rate, it will no longer make sense for 90% of people to use a pickup truck if they don’t need it.
They are. Heavily. In California, right now with gas at $3.59 (Costco), gas taxes are adding around 50% to the price of gas. ($1.15 of fixed fees, plus sales tax)
> All the money from these taxes should go to planting forests, renewables projects etc.
Those types of taxes get passed, but eventually end up in general funds or borrowed against to fund general funds. But people still keep proposing these like next time it won't happen.
> What if cutting oil & gas subsidies came with a proportional (averaged) reduction in taxes?
You can't "cut" subsidies, because there are no direct oil and gas subsidies. There are favorable conditions (e.g. lack of taxation) that are sometimes construed as a subsidy and there are externalities (like carbon emissions) that aren't priced in.
You would have to raise taxes in one place (e.g. carbon/gasoline tax) and then lower them in another place (income tax?).
However, I thought the point of the parent was to raise taxes to make less people drive cars. My point is that if you do that, most people will still drive cars, they will simply pay more for it.
> We also have to consider that alternative methods of taxation (how to pay for roads) and the eventual reduction in tax incentives are problems that still need to be solved.
Are roads really payed from gas taxes? Everywhere? I perhaps naively assumed all the taxes go into a big bucket which is used to pay for all kinds of things, including roads.
Somehow even relatively poor countries manage to have good roads. We will save elsewhere. Most of the taxes go into the social bucket in most countries (retirement, social security, health, education) anyway.
> So you punish those who have/want one? Ouch, I wouldn't want to live in your world.
No. Cars have negative externalities to society, so you tax them to account for those externalities.
This is the same reason why governments subsidize infrastructure and education, as those generate positive externalities to society, and most of the value generated is in those externalities, you need a negative tax on those items to incentivize them.
Or the same reason why governments subsidize electric cars.
> Except that the wealthy person just buys a cheaper car. They still have a car, and you have not accomplished your goal.
Sure, but you're providing the same economic disincentive as you are for a poor person (in relative utility), which is a fairer way to do it.
> Your mistake is you taxed spending, without even checking income.
You don't seem to understand the concept of positive and negative externalities.
I'm not proposing to tax spending, I'm proposing to tax a good so that its price accurately reflects the negative impact on society it causes.
Never been to the States, but wouldn't that be a regressive tax? And regressive taxes are morally bad, as in they hurt the poor more than they hurt the rich. I'm saying this because if you work a McDonald's job in Europe (from where I'm from) you don't probably have a car, you live in the city, and have the benefit of having access to relatively cheaper public transport, but if you have a McDonald's job in the States chances are big that you're going to work by car.
> What do you do when petrol consumption diminishes to the point that it's no longer a good revenue source?
... Survive?
I mean that's the goal of it, it's to decrease the consumption of this resource if it's considered harmful to the biodiversity (in the case of petrol) or wasted (in the case of water). At no point is the goal is to make the govt richer, that's why I said income tax should be reduced thereasmuch.
How about means testing through progressive taxation of income or wealth?
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