Hacker News Reader

Comment by gaius | Hacker News Reader

In the UK fuel taxes raise £50Bn for the exchequer every year and the total transport budget is £25Bn. Maybe it’s different in the US but certainly here, the idea that cars are subsidised just isn’t factually true. Drivers pay for all forms of transportation then contribute as much again to e.g. the NHS.

View on HN

Just a couple of days ago there was a piece reporting research that the UK had the highest fossil fuel subsidies in the EU, to the tune of £10.5bn a year), along with another piece earlier in the week that we have to increase allocation of public funds for subsidising North Sea oil rig decomissioning. Can't quickly dig up a link for the second, but it was around £25bn.

Not to forget that the escalating climate change tax on petrol was paused some years back.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/23/uk-has-b...

FTA significant part of the UK fossil fuel subsidies identified by the commission is the 5% rate of VAT on domestic gas and electricity, cut from the standard 20%

Taxing something less is not the same as subsidising it and it is disingenuous to claim that it is. Is the government subsidising you by taxing you less than some hypothetical percentage?

Oh yes it is true. As a fellow Brit all the fossil fuel use contributes huge amounts of negative externalities in pollution, health damage and other more subtle environmental impacts. Fuel taxes are not high enough. It should cost much more than 1.20 a litre for the overall damage we do driving.

Subsidies can be very indirect and subtle. E.g. "If you want to build this store, you will have to also build one hundred parking spaces. No, we aren't going to give you any money for it, you figure it out"

Reply on news.ycombinator.com