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N.J. bill will start taxing electric cars per mile driven.

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EV owners should pay their share for the roads as well. The question is what is the fair price. I believe that a per mile charge is probably the right way to go, but it shouldn't be more than a highly-efficient ICE pays in gas tax (translated into a per mile fee).
 
I can't even imagine how complicated it would be to track and collect a per-mile tax! Yikes.

Tax collection doesn't necessarily need to relate 1-to-1 to the usage by the taxpayer. As an example, consider public education: Even though I don't have kids, my taxes still help pay for public schools. Public education is part of the "social contract" -- just as encouraging the transition to sustainable transportation should be. At this point in the game, and for the near future (5-10 years?), I hope electric vehicles will continue to receive tax breaks as a way to incentivize our transition away from oil.
 
In theory, I agree with the idea of EVs paying their fair share. But in reality, I pay lots of tolls and pay some of the highest taxes in the nation, and now you want to charge me again for being responsible and driving an EV? And the roads here suck as it is! I don't believe they're using much of the gas tax money for the roads as it is, so don't let that be the excuse to charge me more in tax.
 
As crummy as the roads here are I wonder what they are doing with the tax money they are getting in the first place. I have no problem if the tax was actually going to go to make the roads better but there is no doubt in my mind that not one cent of it will actually go to that.

The article is pretty slow on this too, he started pushing this back in February.

Edit:
Also now that I think about it, just the administration of this will probably cost more than they even get out of it. Also the article is wrong it states "0.00839 cents per mile traveled" but the actual bill states "0.83906 cents per mile traveled"
 
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Whenever I read about states trying to impose an EV mileage tax, I just cringe at their ineptitude. I completely agree that there should be a usage tax for road use, but this is not the right time or way to go about it.

Many people do not realize that in the US the gas tax is paid by the refiners, not by the individual gas stations. So there is a very low cost to administer the gas tax for both the government and the fuel producers. Now imagine having to tax individual cars directly. How much tax do you have to collect to offset the cost to implement such a program? How many EVs have to be on the road before the government can even make a penny of net income from such a tax? I would wager that we are not even close to the level of EV adoption that could justify the development and administration expense of such a tax program in any state other than California.
 
As crummy as the roads here are I wonder what they are doing with the tax money they are getting in the first place. I have no problem if the tax was actually going to go to make the roads better but there is no doubt in my mind that not one cent of it will actually go to that.

The article is pretty slow on this too, he started pushing this back in February.

Edit:
Also now that I think about it, just the administration of this will probably cost more than they even get out of it. Also the article is wrong it states "0.00839 cents per mile traveled" but the actual bill states "0.83906 cents per mile traveled"

Exactly! They are already being irresponsible with my tax and toll money, why should I give them more?
 
In WA, our state govt has instituted a flat $100/yr tax on EVs. The gas tax is how we finance roads and such and EVs were not contributing. With increasingly more efficienct ICEs (esp hybrids), the gas tax revenue has been dropping. The EV tax revenue will be LESS than a drop in the bucket so I expect it will be increased over time. By the way, for ICEs a gas tax is a reasonable proxy for weight-miles traveled because heavier vehicles tend to use more gas than lighter ones - EVs upset this calculus.

What I find ironic is that the state waves EV sales tax as an incentive to increase EV sales. It will take a lot of years at 100/yr to make up the lost sales tax revenue (though we are talking about different accounts).
 
As has been pointed out already, one of the biggest challenges our current system of paying for our roads is that vehicles are increasingly more efficient. As a result, they use less gas and pay less towards the roads while having the same impact on them. It is impossible to understate the vital importance of a well maintained, functioning road system; it's not only how we get to work/school/play, but it's also what keeps goods flowing into stores and food to the shelves of our supermarkets. It's not a glamorous thing, but we let it fall apart to our own great peril.

What I know is that we will need to shift our funding paradigm away from a gas tax and into something else. As I elided to above, an individual's "use" of the roads doesn't amount only to the amount that person drives on those roads in a given year. Indeed, the person who lives in a city and doesn't own a car still get's "use" out of the roads every time he or she walks into a store and buys something or FedEx drops off the shoes she ordered two days ago from Amazon.

Bad roads not only make it unpleasant to drive, but they also make it less efficient. As I've started paying attention to my energy usage more, I've noticed that, while on the freeway, the recently paved sections require less energy to drive across.

What's my point? Well, we need the roads and we need them to be in good shape. The way we've paid for them in the past isn't working now and it will continue to work less in the future so we need to make some changes. Given that we all benefit from the roads I'm okay with the notion of taxing everyone for them equally regardless of how much one drives but I recognize that's not at all a popular notion. The idea of a per mile with weight modifier tax is fine with me if it gets the job done and we can figure out how to do it without spending all the money we raise trying to raise it.
 
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In theory, I agree with the idea of EVs paying their fair share. But in reality, I pay lots of tolls and pay some of the highest taxes in the nation, and now you want to charge me again for being responsible and driving an EV? And the roads here suck as it is! I don't believe they're using much of the gas tax money for the roads as it is, so don't let that be the excuse to charge me more in tax.
Are they offering a state tax credit whenever the roads bust a rim?

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In WA, our state govt has instituted a flat $100/yr tax on EVs.
Aside from my general feelings about it, on one specific point this makes me happy. I'd much rather pay $100/yr. flat rate than to pay for a more complicated system of any kind.