It sounds like the more accurate framing, then, is "I'm not getting a tax break for having an EV". Which is disappointing sure, but not outrageous either.
That's the framing but it's also misleading. We are being charged more than a typical ICE driver would pay in gasoline tax. It's also listed as being for road maintenance, but in fact it goes into the general revenue, so it has nothing to do with road maintenance.
Alberta is imposing a charge on EV registrations, and they increased it again this year. At some point I'm hoping courts curtail their attempt at imposing gas cars but given how Canadian courts are hamstrung at obvious human rights issues in places like Quebec, I doubt they will do anything about Alberta either.
The issue is not paying our fair share, the issue is paying more than we would if we drove gas vehicles. They assume we drove X miles (I’m in Washington state) and that is not even close to what I actually drive (it’s much less, I could game it if I drove more than the C miles they compute the fee on, but I don’t need to drive that much).
Are you seriously comparing the number of people? That's silly. It's the amount paid per person. You pay so much in gas, I pay so much for my EV. For the same amount of driving, I am paying more than you do. That's the problem.
The issue is not paying our fair share, the issue is paying more than we would if we drove gas vehicles.
Perhaps in Washington State that is your issue, but that is not what we are discussing here.
The poster I was replying to lives in Alberta, and your experience in an entirely different country, in that state, has nothing to do with what they pay. Or whether what they pay is fair. And this point was not raised as a concern by the original poster.
Their only concern was paying any tax at all. Their concern was paying for road maintenance costs, period.
So about 50 cents per litre for both federal and provincial gas tax, which disappears if you charge at home. And yes, the federal tax counts, as the federal government transfers funds to the provinces from that tax, and to municipalities, and also gives additional grants to municipalities from that tax.
All which vanishes without a gas tax.
So that's around 1/3 to 1/2 of the price you pay at the pump.
Municipalities also sometimes add additional tax.
All said?
A good average for gas tank size might be 50 litres. Gas prices are typically over $1.20 / litre. So maybe $70 per fillup, which seems fair. Let's just pick $30 in tax per fillup.
I'm being generous here, as most EVs are as heavy as a truck, and cause more road damage than a gas car. And I'll also be more generous, and just say $20 per fillup in lost tax.
This figure, $20, is way below the actual lost tax. I expect this to be more like $50 lost per fillup, with the above logic (weight of vehicle, use of taxes, local taxes).
So with this extremely generous number of $20 per fillup, a yearly registration of $200, is the same as 10 tanks of gas of travel per year.
Or less than one fillup per month for a gas car.
This is obviously meant to be an average, and there are people which drive 200km per day. Others may almost never drive, but that's how averages work.
I have a very, very hard time seeing this as unfair.
I feel it is very, very low compared to what is collected from the gas tax currently.
The only other option is to have odometers inspected yearly, and a tax levied on actual distance driven. In as the tax is very very very generous, and only 40% of what I suspect the actual loss to be, very very very low at $200, few would be better off with a tax on actual distance driven.
Not to mention, a yearly inspection would have additional costs (re: taxes) for the whole administrative framework to do so.
All in all, Albertans seem to be paying far less than people driving gas cars, in tax.
But of course, you did the math before complaining about Alberta flat gas tax, right?
So if so, what is your complaint with this flat tax?
That some people might be buying at $50k CDN car, and only drive it less than 400km per month, and so unfairly pay? Because that's the equivalent tax being levied here.
I'll be very blunt. I find such complaints to be frivolous.
It will be unfair one way or the other. Washington state has a high gas tax by American standards (60 cents a gallon) but I only drive around 30 miles per week. I would need one tank of gas a month on my previous ICE car, and the gas tank took 13 gallons, so I was paying around $100/year in gas taxes. I pay $250/year surcharge for having an EV, so I’m definitely paying more (my EV is a compact rather than a sub-compact I had before, so I would lose some mileage there, although not enough to make such a huge difference).
I get it though, other people pay less. It really should be by mileage and weight, but privacy advocates blow a gasket when someone proposed to track vehicle mileage either in real-time or through yearly odometer gauge checks.
Reducing carbon emissions most certainly is a human rights issue. I absolutely can not breathe when I go to large cities. I live in a village, drive an electric, and charge it from rooftop solar.
You actually can breath in "large cities", unless you have a pre-existing health condition. Otherwise, all the people in those "large cities" would already be dead, and they'd cease being "large cities". Or at least, populated ones.
"Carbon emissions" is a human rights issue, just as 1000 other things are. Whether "reducing" carbon emissions is determined to be a right is not black and white as of yet.
Regardless, leveling a road tax has nothing to do with that. It is merely a tax to be inline with what everyone else pays. You may as well say you have a right to a free electric car too, or maybe a right to get 50% off.
You do realise the roads have to be maintained, yes? And that's what the tax on gas is for, yes? I assure you, endless environmentalists which don't drive anything at all, and see the construction of roads as an annoyance, would be upset at the idea of cars, any type of car, electric or otherwise, as bad. And are very upset at any sort of car being subsidized to increase adoption.
But of course, because you own an electric car, it's now a human rights issue that you get to pay less. Right?
I may have exaggerated. In large cities the air is significantly less comfortable to breathe.
> because you own an electric car, it's now a human rights issue that you get to pay less. Right?
No, why would you think that? It is only fair that electric car users, myself included, pay for the proportional damage and wear to the roads.
Now tell me why the polluting carbon-burning vehicles don't have a separate tax to repair the damage they do to the environment, e.g. climate change? How much would that tax cost?
Such article can end up with a 'false balance' bias by introducing and showing a method one should avoid to motivate the solution. What some people learn is "there are two options".
Maybe it works be better to start with "that's how we do it" and only afterwards following up with "and that's why".
He's making it massively more complex than it actually is
{ // this scope is owner
// allocate
auto my_obj = MyObj{};
// this function scope does not have ownership of my_obj, should take (const MyObj& obj) const reference as parameter
do_something(my_obj);
> As engineers, scientists, researchers, etc our literal job is to break down problems into many smaller problems and then solve them one at a time.
Our literal job is also to look for and find patterns in these problems, so we can solve them as a more common problem, if possible, instead of solving them one at a time all the time.
Very true. But I didn't want to discuss elegance and abstraction as people seem to misunderstand abstraction in programming. I mean all programming is abstraction... abstraction isn't to be avoided, but things can become too abstract
Not off topic at all. For what its worth, the Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey and the Faroe Islands have never been in the EU either. Gibraltar has been though, and has a land border with the EU unlike these other territories.
The person you are asking doesn’t say that they looked and found the service through ads. They say that the cleaning companies spent 35% on marketing. And therefore everyone that uses these services pays 35% more as a result. Not only customers that find the service through ads.
It really does read like they booked through a booking intermediary although the advert part is less clear. In either case, I prefer a personal recommendation if I can get one and we both gain by avoiding the intermediary fee.
> I'm actually being taxed for owning an EV.