Posted on 03/30/2017 11:11:51 AM PDT by AngelesCrestHighway
California’s governor and legislative leaders on Wednesday proposed raising $52 billion to fix the state’s roads through a big gasoline tax increase, higher car registration fees and a charge on emission-free vehicles.
The 10-year plan would boost gasoline excise taxes for the first time in more than two decades, raising them 12 cents per gallon — a 43 percent increase. The tax would rise automatically with inflation.
For the first time, owners of zero emission vehicles would pay a $100 annual fee because they use public roads but don’t pay gasoline taxes that fund highway maintenance.
The plan also includes a sliding fee on vehicles, with owners of cheaper vehicles paying less. The fee, separate from annual vehicle registration fees, would range from $25 a year for vehicles worth less than $5,000 to $175 for cars worth $60,000 and up.
Gov. Jerry Brown said the plan would cost most drivers less than $10 per month and would be offset by reduced vehicle-repair expenses. The governor and Democratic legislative leaders hope to rush it through the Legislature next week.
“Yes, it costs money. And if the roof in your house is leaking, you better fix it, because it gets worse all the time,” Brown said at a Capitol news conference. “This is mostly about fixing what we already have. If for some reason people try to fight this, and God help us if they were successful, they won’t defeat this, they’ll just delay it and make the expenses go up.”
If I drive 10K miles a year in a 30mpg car, I will use 333 gallons of fuel.
The extra 12 cents means an additional $40 in taxes for that 10K miles.
The tax is currently 38 cents, so that’s about $127 in taxes.
After the increase, your average Toyota Corolla driver would be paying about $170 a year to use the roads in California for 10K miles.
If a Tesla Owner pays a fixed $100 fee, he’s getting a sweet deal.
The big rigs pay a lot of road use taxes as well. Far more than cars.
But the point is that heavier vehicles cause more wear. Your average Tesla weighs twice as much as a Toyota Corolla.
With fossil fueled vehicles this is basically self correcting. The heavier the vehicle, the more fuel it uses, thus the more taxes it pays.
These electric vehicles weigh as much, or more, and pay little if any road use fees.
And a lot of the cars on the road aren’t registered (or insured, no doubt). We tell everyone when they affix the current sticker onto their license plates to then take an exacto knife and slash a criss-cross over the tag, so anyone attempting to peel it off and put on their unregistered vehicle will end up with crumbled bits and pieces. SIGH!
It is also a pension tax. You pay and pay and the state worker relaxes with your money.
“But the point is that heavier vehicles cause more wear. Your average Tesla weighs twice as much as a Toyota Corolla.”
Yes but the tires are probably twice the size and inflated to similar pressures.
The roads are over-built for cars and even heavy cars cause very little damage.
Sometimes it pays to read more than just the headline before posting ...
“Sometimes it pays to read more than just the headline before posting ...”
You see that the story is from the AP, so you don’t read that. You find another source for the story.
I don’t support tax increase but something needs to be done to equalize the assessment for electric vehicles. They use the same roads (arguably more than others given the fuel efficiency) but pay no gas tax. A revenue neutral solution would reduce the gas tax and increase vehicle fees for electric cards.
“Tax the cars off the roads then you wouldn’t have to fix them.”
Give ‘Moonbeam’ time he will.
One solution is to gtf out of that Liberal hell hole. I did 35 years ago. Took a big pay cut. Never been sorry. Not for one nanosecond.
Only 10 dollars a month (year sure, only 10 more dollars per month)? Well let’s make it sound even cheaper by saying “ONLY 35 cents a day.”
Yes, paying by mile is a reasonable alternative for vehicles that don’t buy gas. But this $100 fixed fee has no basis in logic. I drive less than 3,000 miles per year, which means a $100 fee equals 3.33 cents per mile. That is the equivalent of paying a DOLLAR per gallon gas tax for a 30mpg gasoline vehicle. The gas tax would be lower on an SUV !
Any attempt to create equivalent taxes for non-gasoline vehicles needs to have more thought involved. Maybe 1 cent per mile per ton of vehicle gross weight, paid by reporting the miles driven on the annual vehicle registration renewal. That at least might bear some rational relationship to the amount of wear and tear a vehicle puts on the roads regardless of fuel.
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