Quote:
Originally Posted by calgarygeologist
They should just roll the gas tax/road tax into a sales tax when new vehicles are purchased. This way the government collects based on new vehicle purchases whether they are gasoline, electric, hydrogen, whatever future source of fuel exists. They can structure the tax on a sliding scale so that larger vehicles and/or more expensive vehicles are taxed at a higher rate. This reduces the tax on lower incomes as they tend to be consumers of used vehicles instead of new vehicles.
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But gas taxes are currently a proxy for vehicle use, and in turn infrastructure costs. If you only drive 5000km a year, and someone else is driving 30 000km a year, you both pay the same tax? that doesn't seem right, either. It's not an easy problem to solve without km tracking, and that leads to privacy issues.
And if your vehicle gets totaled in year 3, you've payed a tax up front that is supposed to be applied to 10 or 20 years of the vehicles life?