TIRE TAX

The increasing use of electric vehicles is certainly beneficial to the environment, especially in urban areas.  The environmental costs of individual 3500+-pound automobiles idling at traffic lights and parking places is staggering, not to mention (but briefly) the FACT that the internal combustion engine is woefully inefficient as a means of transportation.

HOWEVER, those electric vehicles are, arguably, not paying their “fair share” of highway costs, which are funded primarily with taxes on hydrocarbon fuel sales.  This electric vehicles are not consuming hydrocarbons, yet they are using the highways.  To be sure, they are putting a much lower burden on those highways than fueled cars, but that electricity has to be generated somewhere, and if it’s generated with hydrocarbon fuels, then we are back to where we started.

And more and more vehicle types (including heavier trucks) will be converting to electricity as time passes.  Many vehicles are powered by propane, too, which may or may not have highway taxes imposed thereon.  And some Diesel-powered vehicles can run on used cooking oil.  The singer Willie Nelson brags about his Diesel-powered bus running on used cooking oil!  The exhaust supposedly smells like french fries!  What’s not to like about that?

Anyway, I think it’s time to take the highway taxes COMPLETELY off fuels and impose them on TIRES instead, because EVERY vehicle uses tires, even if it runs on electricity or even sea-water, as the “hydrogen” crowd likes to say.  (They don’t ever explain how that “sea-water” might be converted to hydrogen using lots of ELECTRICITY generated somehow!  There is no free lunch!)

And, those tire taxes can be imposed in a graduated fashion based on tire size: heavier vehicles use larger tires, while lightweight vehicles can use smaller tires.  Highway wear and tear is usually a function of vehicle weight.  Heavier vehicles create the need for more highway maintenance.

But, no politician I know of wants to pick up that cudgel and go to war.  Advocating ANY taxation is usually punished by voters.  It does not matter whether or not it makes any sense.  I have written to both my state and federal representatives about this issue, and I have NEVER gotten any reply at all!

Honestly, I cannot find anyone who will even take issue with my thinking.  I have never even seen this issue discussed anywhere.  But, I think I am right.