‘Green’ Cars Cause Rise in Taxes
More fuel efficiency and less driving even by carpooling means less tax revenue for the government, and the green car is to blame.
By EconMatters
You see, for each gallon of gasoline or diesel we gas up in our cars, there’s a portion of tax that goes to the state government to fund the building and maintenance of roads and bridges. So unfortunately, more fuel efficiency and less driving even by carpooling means less tax revenue for the government, and the green car is to blame.
For example, in Vermont, revenue collection of the state’s transportation fund has been shy of their target for seven straight years. According to AP, 25% of Vermont’s expected $232-million transportation fund in the current fiscal year is supposed to come from the gasoline tax of about 20 cents a gallon.
“The drive to promote greener, more efficient motoring will blow a £13bn hole in the public finances as revenue from fuel and road taxes dries up.”
“Drivers may end up being taxed more, even as the industry adapts to meet environmental targets….[government will be] forced to look at ways of clawing back the money motorists think they will be saving.”
Now the U.S. is projected to have high growth in green car sales. Market research firm Mintel says that U.S. sales of hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and electric cars should reach 440,000 units in 2012 — a 73% improvement over 2011, reaching 850,000 in unit sales by 2017, or 5% of the U.S. auto market.
Separately, a 2011 study by the J.D. Power and Associates projects major growth, as much as 10%, of vehicles with fuel-efficient technologies by 2016, which would represent a four-fold increase in the sales numbers for green cars compared to 2010.
“….. calculating how much of a VMT tax is owed would be done through the global positioning system devices that are expected to be standard equipment [capable of tracking location, time] in cars later this decade.”
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