[from occupied ga]

One big flaw with the fuel tax is that revenues decline consistently over time as: (1) vehicles running on something other than gasoline or diesel fuel become more common, and (2) vehicles running on these fossil fuels become more fuel efficient.

I'm curious as to why you consider this a flaw. I'd consider anything that reduces taxes to the citizen to be an advantage or a strength.

This is always preferred to a tax scheme where a lot of the costs of the infrastructure are paid by everyone.

How is a fuel tax paid by everyone? Only those who buy fuel (presumably to power their motor vehicles) pay the tax.

[ridesthemiles]

How is a fuel tax paid by everyone? Only those who buy fuel (presumably to power their motor vehicles) pay the tax.”””

There is hardly a single item in the USA commerce stream which is not delivered by a TRUCK at some time in the delivery path.

Therefore, EVERY SINGLE person pays for those taxes in the retail cost of those products.

[Alberta's Child]

Motor fuel taxes don't cover all of the costs of the transportation system. In fact, I believe the Federal transportation trust fund is only for capital expenditures, not operating costs, maintenance & repairs, etc. In some states the cost of regular maintenance is staggering. I was working on a project in Pennsylvania some years ago and the number we used for our financial projections was $10,000 per year per lane-mile. That's around $13.5 million per year just for Interstate 80 alone. And Pennsylvania has responsibility for more than 40,000 miles of roadway, which doesn't include local roads that aren't under PennDOT's jurisdiction.

None of these maintenance costs are paid out of the state's motor fuel taxes.

[Alberta's Child]

I'm curious as to why you consider this a flaw. I'd consider anything that reduces taxes to the citizen to be an advantage or a strength.

It's a "flaw" if one or both of these conditions result from it:

1. The elimination of taxes for certain types of vehicles means you can have two motorists using the same public infrastructure and not paying the same costs for it. That's hardly a sound proposition.

2. Motorists have their taxes reduced, yet the cost of the public infrastructure has to be covered by someone else. I don't see how that makes any sense.