Tax Policies and green transportation, to encourage adoption, or to fund the roads
Tax policies are impacted by Green Transportation in two ways:
| **Encouraging adoption**: Tax breaks are being used to mitigate the cost and encourage adoption. Past tax breaks have been successful in encouraging hybrid vehicle adoption. |
| **Impact on road taxes**: The road system is primarily funded from fuel tax, but electric vehicles don't use fuels that are taxed. What's the government to do? |
At the moment (late 2013) electric vehicle adoption is still in small enough numbers that gasoline tax revenue is not affected. However the project of getting people to buy electric vehicles is surely going to take off in a couple years when the second generation of EV's comes along. Once there are significant numbers of EV's on the road, the affect on tax revenue will be significant.
The US system of gasoline taxes to fund the highway system has many excellent features. It is anonymous, fair, and very efficient to capture the money at the gasoline pump. It's so invisible that most people probably aren't aware they're paying a tax. But, it makes governments wholly dependent on gasoline to fund the highway system. Governments want us to adopt electric vehicles, raising a question ...
How will we collectively pay for the highway system?
- Tax Policies and green transportation, to encourage adoption, or to fund the roads
- Big Brother concerns with collecting vehicle miles traveled taxes
- History of EV tax proposals across the US
- PEV Collaborative Transportation Funding Consensus Statement
- What's problem electrified vehicles cause for highway funding
- Mileage-Based User Fees for Transportation Funding; A Primer for State and Local Decisionmakers
- When should changes to highway system funding be enacted
- Transportation Fuel taxes in the U.S., Canada, Australia, etc
- Vehicle Excise Duty
- Vehicle miles traveled tax
