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Comment by mikestew | Hacker News Reader

How do you pay more taxes on EVs when you factor in gas taxes?

Huh? Simple math?

$MILES_PER_YEAR/$200 (EV tax in WA) vs. $GALLONS_USED * $0.18 in the ICE car. I pay more in taxes to run the EV in a year than I do for equivalent miles in a 35mpg ICE. IOW, if I drove the Scion xB all the time, I’d pay less tax.

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The alternative is them checking the odometer each year on the EVs, which would be fairer, but I feel like Americans would complain that’s an invasion of their privacy or something. Or it would upset the rural voters who have disproportionate power in this country.

Modern cars are full of phone home shenanigans, many of them with cameras and ToS that allow them to observe everything and sell all of the data to anyone that can rub two cents together. IIRC laws coming into effect next year mandate even more of it. If Americans care about privacy of their cars they have a funny way of showing it. The odometer read would actually be a great privacy improvement compared to that.

I think they should just tax tires. It sounds easier to administer and if it was a natural tax it would alleviate the main weakness it seemed to have: That's you buy your tires in the state with the lowest tire tax.

They already check mileage when they do emissions. Not sure if the state gets the info back.

I fully support the government reading my odometer during every single emissions check of my EV ;).

What about your insurance company?

I drove 15,000 miles last year and paid 33.3 cents per gallon to my state. That’s around 833.33 gallons of gas so I paid about $278 dollars. $20 more. Assuming 18mpg.

For an EV I’d pay $258.90 extra to register.

My state must be factoring in average miles driven to come up with the $258 number instead of charging per mile driven.

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