Remove fuel taxes. Apply taxes to tires. Done and done.
this post was submitted on 30 Apr 2025
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You'd incentive people to make tires that lasted longer and that would be horrible.
But also
House republicans have proposed putting a $200/year federal registration tax on EVs
I do love it when Republicans ride into office on a wave of people screaming "ARGH! I HATE TAXES!" and then spend the first four months in office finding an exciting new way to raise people's taxes.
More than anything, I'm looking forward to all those Cybertruck owners getting the "Fell For It Again" award branded onto their foreheads.
Adjust taxes based on tread wear rating.
Or just tax by miles driven and vehicle curb weight instead of doing stupid proxy workarounds.
There's a whole lot more administrative overhead that would need to go into collecting miles driven data after it's been driven, and such a system would be far easier to cheat.
Tax on tires based on treadwear and load ratings would be dead simple to implement.
If you do it based on company estimates for wear at the time the car is sold, hello expensive tires! You are collecting 30k miles worth of taxes at once. The tax would be even higher on long wear tires! On top of that different states have wildly different amounts of tax they add to gas which will incentivize buying tires from out of state. I assume similar differences exist in the EU as a comparison. This tax would also be part of buying a car, since they come with tires.
If a tire gets ruined, you already paid the tax and get to pay it again to continue driving. Hello potholes and construction nails!
If you try to spread it out based on wear over time, that would be far harder to calculate than just checking the odometer.
Okay, the expensive tires thing is a problem. I did a little math.
Let's say you get 50K miles out of a set of tires. At 25MPG, with an existing fuel tax of $0.50/gal, switching that to a tax on tires would amount to $250 per tire for a set of four to equal out. You'd ultimately be paying the same amount, but attaching it to the tire would make that all come up front. And then, yeah, you'd have people driving out of state for tires (if neighboring states didn't do the same thing), as well as driving in to the state for the cheap gas.
Bah.
Let's say you get 50K miles out of a set of tires.
Note that most EVs get nowhere near that. The faster acceleration, higher torque, and heavier weight chew through tires.
So a flat tax on tires would results in EV owners paying more even though they don't damage the road significantly more than petrol vehicles.
even though they don't damage the road significantly more than petrol vehicles
Doubt
Most road damage comes from large vehicles like trucks and busses.
So I'll swap some newer tires on there timed with this. Or keep a set of barely used ones. Grab some cheap ones from a car yard. They'd need a lot of strict rules around this.
Don't insurance and dmv already collect miles driven
Road user charges aren't uncommon. You prepay for mileage and if your odometer doesn't match the tag, you are fined.
Treadwear isn't a scientific measurement though.
Eh...people already drive on tires well after they're too bald to be safe anymore. Taxing tires is just a great way to make sure that people replace them even less often.
Maybe increase vehicle registration fees? Charge connection fees to connect your driveway to a public street? Charge businesses per-space parking lot taxes? I dunno. This seems like a tricky problem to solve.
Why not apply to mileage instead? More miles on the roads means you use the infrastructure more
Tire wear is proportional to vehicle mileage and weight. A tire tax would effectively do the same thing while being easier to implement.
Incentivizes not replacing tires which is bad for safety and all.
It is until tire manufacturers get an incentive to sell decreased wear tires, likely at the expense of other features. Along with people putting off tire replacement even longer, this would just be asking for a significant decrease in road safety.
Is it easier to implement? Maybe, but not really.
An alternative and would just be an annual inspection. Some states already require this, many just emissions. Just have it as a blanket annual safety inspection requirement for all vehicles, including emissions for the necessary vehicles.
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In Oklahoma they used to tax vehicles according to sale value. A lightweight, fiberglass Corvette could be an easy $600 a year while my friend's 2-ton dump truck had antique plates at $20 a year. Guess which one tore up the roads.
I think they changed that system long ago, and at the time Texas taxed according to vehicle weight.
Antique and Classic plates usually have pretty restrictive use policies associated with them. Assuming you don't ignore them and risk a ticket every time you drive outside those uses.
For Oklahoma for instance:
Affiant further states that the vehicle described above will travel highways of this state primarily incidental to historical or exhibition purposes only.
From the application form: https://oklahoma.gov/content/dam/service-oklahoma/Documents/mv-forms/license-plate/763%20Classic%20Vehicle%20Plate.pdf
Given the antique registered vehicle is supposed to only be used on public roads in very limited scenarios, the small cost is appropriate, regardless of the specific vehicle.
"Primarily" does a lot of heavy lifting there. Basically, it doesn't outlaw using it in other manners so it wouldn't be easily enforceable by a traffic cop. It would only really be brought forward as fraud if a prosecutor could prove you used it "primarily" for other reasons.
And thats beyond saying that driving it, on its own, is not an exhibition purpose.
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Wait what? Aren’t CO2 emissions caused by burning fossil fuels? Why wouldn’t you want to tax those?
This isn't about CO2. I think the idea is that a lot of our funding for roads is based around the taxes for gasoline and diesel. Since EVe don't use either, they are damaging the roads at the same (or more due to their weight) but not providing the tax revenue for the maintenance work needed.
Moving to tires would apply the taxation to both vehicles types. I think it's a bit short sighted and tires are used for more than road vehicles; but at the same time so is gasoline (like yard equipment.)
That's how you end up with people driving on racing slicks and wire...
imho, the 'loss' of fuel tax is made up by having no tailpipe emissions fucking up the air.
until ev makes up more than half of the vehicles on the road and ice is legislatively deprecated with a sales cut-off set in stone, i think ev owners should get the benefit of no tax on its 'power source' as one of the incentives to switch to and keep using them over petrol-powered vehicles.
Aww! Losing fuel taxes? Bummer. Maybe they should ask deep-red Alabama how they do without taxing fuel.
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Let me guess, they want this but with a caveat of not including teslas in the tax increase.
they really do want to see the world burn, literally, not figuratively. They won't be happy until we're all dying from extreme heat.
We should ask why. Did they fuck up the economy and need new revenue?
Let me laugh for a solid minute here. I friggin' love these guys. They're going to make the entire country Detroit because they're such snowflakes that can't take competition. Hilarious.
You wish, I'd rather be in Detroit then anywhere in the south.
At least you can buy a house in Detroit. May not be a nice one, probably abandoned a decade ago, but there are options available.
Unlike the average new home price being $1 million or some shit Nationwide now that was reported a few days ago.
So the US becoming Detroit would be an improvement? Goddamn.
Some motherfuckers never got punched in the throat mouth enough when they were kids trying to be bullies
In Ohio we already pay $200 additional for registering an EV compared to ICE. 🤦♂️
NJ has something like that as well.
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Oh I'm sure their new "efficiency" overlord will just love that.
Tesla will just get an exemption.
I doubt the real president will like that.
It's already been reved to $250
Take them tarrifs to 10000000x MAGAts.
Carbon is 666 element. They burn black demon blood locked away in the depths of the earth and shun clean energy from the divine light of the sun. Treat them like heretics.
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