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SB 16 in California: $100 annual fee for ZEVs

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RandyS

Fan of Elon
Jul 8, 2012
986
1,324
San Diego
fyi, in case you haven't heard...SB 16 is working its way through the process to help raise funds for California's roads...

Features (so far) include:

* Increase California vehicle registration from $43 to $78
* Increase California fuel tax 10 cents per gallon for gasoline and 12 cents per gallon for diesel
* Increase VLF fee/tax from 0.65% of car's value by 0.07% each year for 5 years (ultimately to 1%)
* Add a new ZEV fee of $100/year

Read More:
Bealls Future | Senator Jim Beall

SB16 | California 2015-2016 | Department of Transportation.
 
Strongly disagree. You want to know who's damaging the roads in California? It's not EVs, it's not even most ICE sedans. It's big rig truckers. For proof just ride in their lanes and notice the difference. They chew up our roads so bad.

i will also reiterate my strongly held opinion that California needs to increase EV incentives in order to achieve Gov Brown's targets related to ZEV purchases and the broader GHG reduction targets. We ought to strive to look more like Norway, which does a very impressive job of spurring EV sale growth.
 
This is why we should change the way vehicle registration in California is calculated from the value of the car to the weight of the vehicle (as other states do). This would more fairly represent the wear and tear on the road than the cost of the car does.
 
EVs currently comprise a negligible percentage of new car sales. We need to get that number up before we begin to think about curtailing incentives. Perhaps Norway is at a point where they can start weighing these options but CA most certainly is not.
 
In general, I agree with what they're trying to do. However, I prefer to align fees to costs. The registration fee will go from $43 to $78. Where does that money go? Certainly, it does not cost $78 to process license plate renewals and mail a printout back to owners. They should just add a new $35 Road Use Fee or something. I think in order to qualify the VLF as a Personal Property Tax, it must be percentage based, otherwise I would suggest to add the flat amount there. Also it was stated that the Bill proposes to move the Truck Weight Fee from the General Fund and earmark it for road maintenance. This is good. However, they don't say where the $100 ZEV fee will go. If you're going to claim that EVs are not contributing to road maintenance, then you should earmark the fee so that it actually gets used that way. Appearances are important in this regard.
 
As long as they actually use the taxes and fees for road maintenance, I'm okay paying a little more. In the past they have taken a large part of the gas tax and used the money for the general fund.

Sounds like all of it goes to the general fund:
https://trackbill.com/bill/CA/2015/SB16/department-of-transportation said:
II. Vehicle license and registration fee increases. SB 16 incrementally increases the vehicle

license fee to a rate of 1%, over a 5-year period beginning July 1, 2015, with the revenues above

the current 0.65% rate to be deposited in the General Fund and used for transportation general

obligation bond debt service. Additionally, the bill increases the annual vehicle registration by

$35, and adds a new $100 annual vehicle registration fee applicable to zero-emission motor

vehicles.
 
$100 EV tax won't do anything to help with road maintenance at this point I don't think. There are far too few EVs on the road to make much of a difference. It might, however, be enough to discourage sales of EVs, which is exactly the wrong thing to do. It is not appropriate to add taxes to EVs or renewable energy at this stage. If anything we should be doubling down with subsidies for clean/renewable tech to get adoption up.

A road use tax might be a good thing (gas tax seems to get spent on whatever, not necessarily road maintenance), but not for ZEVs at this point.
 
For us Tesla folks, a fixed fee like $100 will always be a good deal (unless, you hardly drive your Tesla). Putting a fixed fee on a ZEV regardless of how much the car is driven is not a progressive tax -- it hits the folks who drive less relatively harder on a per mile basis. Good deal for folks with longer range who use the car regularly and bad deal for folks like Leaf owners who drive less on average due to the range.
 
For us Tesla folks, a fixed fee like $100 will always be a good deal (unless, you hardly drive your Tesla). Putting a fixed fee on a ZEV regardless of how much the car is driven is not a progressive tax -- it hits the folks who drive less relatively harder on a per mile basis. Good deal for folks with longer range who use the car regularly and bad deal for folks like Leaf owners who drive less on average due to the range.

Nobody would suggest that everybody pay the same amount, yet we're seeing politicians pull this crap all over the country. Ironically CA is otherwise actually being constructive about developing a longer-term road pricing system.
 
I also Strongly disagree. If California wouldn't have robbed the funds that were collected through prior gas taxes, we would have funds to repair our roads and they would not be in the condition they are in today. The more money our government collects, the more they waste.
 
As long as they actually use the taxes and fees for road maintenance, I'm okay paying a little more. In the past they have taken a large part of the gas tax and used the money for the general fund.
I also Strongly disagree. If California wouldn't have robbed the funds that were collected through prior gas taxes, we would have funds to repair our roads and they would not be in the condition they are in today. The more money our government collects, the more they waste.
While the licensing fees posted above may go to the General Fund, the gas tax (excise tax) is required by the constitution to go toward only transportation expenses (with a limited portion going to public transit). This has never changed.
The confusion might be the fuel sales tax created in 1971 and that went toward the general fund during times of fiscal emergency. In 2002 this was changed so that sales tax revenue from fuel sales as also went only to transportation. The only difference now between the sales and excise portion is that the sales portion goes toward local transportation, and the excise goes toward the entire state's.

http://www.mercurynews.com/traffic-old/ci_23563585/state-gas-tax-rises-3-5-cents-monday
http://www.mercurynews.com/mr-roadshow/ci_22775595/roadshow-californias-gas-tax-and-what-we-do

While there's a lot of talk of the 2010 "fuel tax swap" diverting funds from the gas tax to the General Fund, what it actually did was stop funding certain transportation expenses (debt service on highway/road bonds) from the General Fund and made the gas tax fund it. So it remained true that every penny of the gas tax went toward transportation expenses, it's just that it had extra burden it didn't have before.
http://www.mtc.ca.gov/legislation/state_budget_3-10.htm
http://www.lao.ca.gov/analysis/2011/transportation/tax_swap_012511.aspx

If it was true that the gas tax was able to cover all our transportation expenses (with no burden on the General Fund), then such "swaps" would have no effect, but that's obviously not true. A lot of our transportation expenses are funded by bonds through the General Fund.
http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/tpp/offices/eab/fundchrt_files/Transportation_Funding_in_CA_2014.pdf
 
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I'm happy to pay for driving on our roads, but in California we pay the highest percentage of gas tax for road repair that ends up in the black hole. We are voting on this exact subject in Sonoma County for road repair and all the politicians say the monies collected will only go to road repair. There is so much corruption and waste in government that we really do not know where the money ends up. So create a fund that can only be used for road repair (not a transportation fund) and then fix the roads.