going to get hurt by the removal of state and local deductions.
but wait....
California Considers Placing A Mileage Tax On Drivers
you guys want to tax miles.....
is there a more regressive tax???
jesus you guys don't ever stop at screwing people.
Isnt that one of the benefits of electric cars that you tout, cost of gas, so now you're going to tax people because you're losing revenue with more efficient cars......
WHO KNEW This would happen, what a shock!!!!!!!!!!!!!
PS
Only lefties find this as a shock and those they don't knew it was going to happy and lied to everyone about these topics.
The noted mileage tax is planned to be levied upon electric cars because they use disproportionately less gas to traverse the roads their drivers travel. It makes sense in that at the moment and in the past, gas consumption was treated as a proxy for road usage. As vehicles use less and less gas to travel between destinations, roads get used no less.
is there a more regressive tax???
The
regressivity of a mileage tax depends on where it's enacted and how it's structured.
From the referenced article:
If you own an older vehicle that is fueled by gas, you’re paying gas tax to maintain the roads. Someone who has an electric vehicle or a dramatically more fuel efficient vehicle is paying much less than you are. But they are still using the roads.
From the standpoint of the financial position of electric car buyers compared to internal combustion engine car buyers, I suspect that on the whole the former are wealthier. If that is indeed so, it's not likely that the mileage tax is regressive.
On the other hand, were the mileage tax imposed upon drivers/owners of internal combustion engine vehicles, if it's also the case that poorer people drive more than do wealthier people, the tax may well be regressive if it's not structured so that also captures the indirect road usage on which wealthy people depend even when they aren't themselves driving their own vehicle(s) on the roads.
For example:
- I often use the road between my home and the airport, but almost never do I drive my own car to make that trip.
- I've been to the Los Angeles area many times and spent many months there, yet I've never driven a car in the Los Angeles area.
- Most of the goods and services -- even some of the basic ones like dry cleaning and groceries -- I procure are delivered to my home; thus I rarely drive to obtain them.
- I live in downtown D.C. where it's a five or ten minute walk from my home to myriad places many people drive to -- the social clubs to which I belong, the restaurants I frequent, the barber, the aesthetician, my tailor, etc.
Given my lifestyle and the relatively high cost of living it, a mileage tax would have little impact on me in comparison to folks who lack the means to comfortably avail themselves of the same level of convenience that comes from living in the center of a cosmopolitan European-style city where a large share of "stuff" is within walking distance or where using taxis and car services is not prohibitively expensive. Thus, if it be so that the mileage tax would fairly well not be a tax people like me pay, it would be regressive because the fact of the matter is that I could not avail myself of all the things I do were there not good roads in place so that the people could get there to work and suppliers could not get their goods and services to those establishments. Even though I'm not as much a direct user of the roads as are others, I'm every bit as dependent on the very same roads that are folks who frequently drive on them.
Another thing to keep in mind about taxes like the gas tax is that often they are "special fund" taxes. Special fund taxes are taxes that governments can use for only a very limited set of purposes; such tax revenue is not part of the general fund, or general revenue, a jurisdiction receives. How tax revenue is used, of course, has nothing to do with the nature and extent of a tax's regressivity; it has only to do with whether the tax's stated purpose aligns with how the tax revenue indeed will be used. So, if a legislator asserts the mileage tax is for roads, yet the money goes into the state's general fund, it's certain that the money will get used for all sorts of things besides road construction and maintenance.
