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© Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.As fuel taxes plummet, U.S. states weigh charging by the mile instead of the tank
By JULIE CARR SMYTH COLUMBUS, Ohio©2025 GPlusMedia Inc.
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TaiwanIsNotChina
Wait, what? Last I checked, gasoline vehicles were still the majority of the vehicles on the road. If there was anything approaching a reasonable carbon tax including on gas, the revenues should have funded roads through 2100.
TaiwanIsNotChina
Another problem: if someone drives 50 miles at night and someone else drives 50 miles during the day, how is that equitable when the daytime driver is participating in way more congestion?
kyushubill
The cabal will stop at nothing to take away all the average people enjoy. Meat, driving, A/C, wood burning pizza ovens, BBQ grills, ...
https://nypost.com/2023/06/25/nyc-rules-crack-down-on-coal-wood-fired-pizzerias-must-cut-carbon-emissions-up-to-75/
YeahRight
I could perhaps go along with this if it meant no gas taxes, period. That is, as a replacement. My guess is that it will be an addition, just so The Powers That Be can take away more of our money.
bearandrodent
As they say, death and taxes are the only 2 things that are certain in life. So I am guessing they will raise taxes on something else, maybe something completely unrelated to fuel, so that the government can continue to spend. I can literally count on one hand the time taxes went down, but it was either very short lived or the gap filled in by some other kind of tax.
Just imagine if you ran your household on that premise - no need to cut expenses or be frugal because you are guaranteed a steady source of income (in this case, taxes YOU pay). The only option you really have is to move to another location, but I doubt if the grass is any greener even if you move.
GBR48
Complicating taxes and adding anything digital that tracks people is just a bad idea. If you need to raise more cash, increase the tax on petrol/diesel at the pump. The more people use, the more it costs them.
wtfjapan
increase the tax on petrol/diesel at the pump.
what about EVs, many owners of EVs also own rooftop solar, effectively making their own electricity to charge their cars, how do they pay their road usage taxes
Peter Neil
It doesn’t matter where the energy comes from to charge your EV, since they’re not getting it at the pump. The average is $0.38 per gallon, so you’re going to pay up for the equivalent amount of energy.
The royals want their tax money.
Algernon LaCroix
If it's that important, tax EV users at the charging point, like they do for petrol, etc. This could also be linked to home-based charging points if need be. Taxing people by distance is a terrible idea in terms of privacy. There are no good reasons for governments being allowed to monitor us just going about our business. It seems that just about anything can be used as an excuse for bringing in a social credit score. Driving too far in your 15-minute city to visit a steak restaurant? Double-plus ungood. No flights for you!
Makes the Soup Nazi seem like a reasonable guy.
Speed
It seems as if all the government ever does is sit around thinking about how they can tax and suction more money away from the average Joe.
Even if they were to find a way to miraculously generate power for free, they would still charge you and tax you for it.
Jind
Electric cars are heavier because of the batteries and cause more wear and tear on the roads. But they pay no 'gas tax' for the maintenance of the roads.
It is time for all road users to pay towards the maintenance of the roads and change the 'gas tax' to 'road usage tax'.
Bicyclists to be excluded unless they are electric.
Secondly, If a electric car catches fire, it takes many times more use of water to stop the fire. For USA states like California which has little water, nothing has been thought about the extra maintenance of the roads and extra water usage to turn out the fires for the woke polices to go electric cars in CA.
Blacklabel
how dare you have a car and (gasp!) drive it.
you will own nothing, enjoy nothing and do nothing- except work to generate tax revenue to give away to other countries who liberal government decides need it more than you do.
TaiwanIsNotChina
I guarantee you it is not as much as the damage that 1-ton trucks do, which are legal for inexplicable reasons.
Yeah, I'm sure said by nobody that believes in climate change ever.
deanzaZZR
Some Americans are incredibly dumb. They now see the rise of EV as a threat to their treasured huge pollution belching gas and diesel trucks.
Our hopes can only lie in the hopefully smarter younger generations. Teach science.
kyushubill
"Our hopes can only lie in the hopefully smarter younger generations. Teach science."
Oh yes because everyone knows if they disagree with you and your opinions then they dumb. Gee, how scientific.
bass4funk
And they would be right.
God help us all, these kids can't even put a PBJ sandwich together.
Antiquesaving
You mean the younger generation that cannot spend 1 minute without checking their smartphone, walk around like zombies not looking where they are going, the generation that is so lazy they need a device to turn on the device that turns on another device, etc..
The generation that cannot fix anything so just buys a new one, the generation that won't even get out of their seat to turn on the light adjust the thermostat and need to ask a WiFi device to do it , requiring millions of kilowatts and hundreds of thousands of servers running 24/7 just in the event they need to turn a light on!
That " smarter younger generation"?
A Young man from North America a few months back in my shop had arrived in Japan in January, he was wondering if my house was WiFi connected because his apartment didn't have WiFi lighting, HVAC etc..and couldn't Hook up Alexa .
I asked how big was his place that he needed everything connected, a 1 LDK .
The government will somehow figure a way to tax us on our cars EV or ICE to maintain the road system but do not think it has anything to do with greenhouse gas, climate change, the environment, etc...
The present generation is using far more resources than ever before, cars are changed sooner, TV, smartphone, every gadget possible the present generation needs a new one every year or two.
Their perfectly good refrigerator needs to be changed because they cannot connect it to the WiFi and have it dispense the exact amount and temperature of water or know what is inside by checking their App.
And the cars are no different now!
Hervé L'Eisa
The elephant in the room is the proposed further expansion of the Surveillance State.
Some folks are all too willing to give away freedoms (especially others' freedoms) for a little bit of "safety".
Way too much tracking already!
Desert Tortoise
May I share my personal experience on a citizens tax oversight committee in my city that was overseeing a sales tax increment dedicated to "streets and police".
35-40 years ago gas tax revenues were sufficient to cover most highway funding short of new construction of freeways. Today gas taxes cover less than half of that cost. A major reason for that is better fuel economy. Most gas taxes are applied in units of currency per unit of fuel. Cents per gallon in the US. Euros per liter, Yen per liter, etc. elsewhere. A driver might drive the same distance every year but as this notional driver replaces older cars with newer cars that feature lower fuel consumption, that driver is effectively paying fewer cents per mile towards highway maintenance. The same is true of the heavy truck fleet btw. There have been big improvements in fuel economy for those big semis on the highway.
"Raising taxes" is universally hated, but people often do not even notice when their effective tax rate has declined, which is really the case with highway fuel taxes. Now most highway maintenance and construction funding comes from general funds instead of from dedicated fuel taxes, but that puts highway maintenance in competition with other funding priorities that depend on the general fund for their revenue, in particular education funding but also things like flood control and and public safety.
Antiquesaving
You make some very good points.
But here are a few not listed.
Do you the environmental movement, more and more money is being spent on creating bike lanes and no car zones around North America, Europe and even Japan.
Now how is this being paid for? Well the fuel taxes because these lanes are still included as "road ways".
Many here and certain politicians and businesses are banking on less car ownership more share vehicles.
So lower fuel revenue, less vehicles, more EV (even if miles/km taxed).
Where is the money to maintain these roads going to come from?
The government can't tax fuel if EV become the dominant cars, they could never tax distance enough, that would only make people avoiding using their cars.
So taxing cars is archaic especially in places where cycling is becoming a more preferable mode of transportation!
What next, tracking devices built into bicycles so the government can tax them?
Cities in Canada are now taxing property owners to make up the shortfall with small cities having $ 9,000 a year tax on a $500,000 home (this used to be $3,000 )
The age of taxing cars/fuel is over and a more equitable system needs to be put in place.
TaiwanIsNotChina
Unless you live in a petrostate, that's how governments ARE funded.
Desert Tortoise
Precious few commute and do their shopping by bicycle, even in China (been there enough times to know). People have to arrive at work looking presentable and not smelling like a stale sock, soaking wet from rain or half frozen by snow. Motorized transport of some form is how most people get around, whether by car, motorcycle, scooter or public transportation. The bicycle lane argument doesn't go very far. Our city's bike path was paid for out of general funds, not highway funds. I know because I was there and part of the decision on that city council.
1glenn
Last year 19% of the personal vehicles sold here in California were zero emission EVs, which by definition don't pay gasoline taxes. By 2030 over half the vehicles sold every year will be zero emission, and by 2035, nearly 100%. So, it makes sense for the government to start thinking about how to continue funding for roads, as gasoline taxes decline.
As a retiree, driving very few miles, either method of taxation will have a minimal effect on us. If I were still driving many tens of thousands every year, that would be a different story.