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Comment by ranit | Hacker News Reader

Could you please elaborate on:

> I'm actually being taxed for owning an EV.

There's a special excise tax on gasoline for highway and road maintenance.

EVs don't pay that tax because they use normal electricity. So Alberta introduced a $200 EV fee to match the average revenue from the excise tax.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/alberta-electric-veh...

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.

The first part is untrue:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47475419

The second is not necessarily true.

https://www.saskatchewan.ca/business/taxes-licensing-and-rep...

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.

>Canadian courts are hamstrung at obvious human rights issues

Huh?

Paying the fair share for road maintenance isn't a human rights issue.

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?

>You actually can breath in "large cities", unless you have a pre-existing health condition.

Did you know that some people have health conditions?

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?

You responded to this:

Paying the fair share for road maintenance isn't a human rights issue.

by saying this:

Reducing carbon emissions most certainly is a human rights issue.

Which was is in a thread where someone complained about paying tax, and "human rights".

So yes, naturally, I would think that is your intent.

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).

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.

Most states and provinces I think have already applied a flat yearly registration fee surcharge to make up for lost gas tax revenue.

Most states and provinces I think have already applied a flat yearly registration fee surcharge to make up for lost gas tax revenue

Indeed. No one is contesting that. So what is your point?

In as you are leveling some sort of complaint against a flat tax, are you attempting to claim that any tax is unfair? If so, why?

Let's look at Alberta:

https://www.alberta.ca/electric-vehicle-tax-claims

Here, it states the yearly fee is $200.

Now let's compare to gas taxes in Alberta:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_fuel_taxes_in_Canada

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.

> paying more than we would if we drove gas vehicles

The 6 people driving EVs in Alberta/Saskatchewan are paying more than $7 trillion in taxes[1]? I find that hard to believe!

[1] Fossil-fuel subsidies surged to a record $7 trillion last year: https://www.imf.org/en/blogs/articles/2023/08/24/fossil-fuel...

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.

> For the same amount of driving, I am paying more than you do.

You aren't. See this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47475419

Some countries charge a road tax or annual vehicle tax, and ev’s are often except as a green incentive

and some places charge a higher annual fee for EVs due to roads being largely funded by gas taxes.

Seems totally fair to me so long as the averages largely line up for both vehicle types.

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