{"id":1583,"date":"2024-03-04T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-03-04T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/?p=1583"},"modified":"2024-09-22T11:46:24","modified_gmt":"2024-09-22T15:46:24","slug":"higher-ev-registration-fees-and-tax-fairness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/2024\/03\/04\/higher-ev-registration-fees-and-tax-fairness\/","title":{"rendered":"Higher EV Registration Fees and Tax &#8220;Fairness&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Nobody likes taxes, but they would not be so bad if other people would pay their &#8220;fair share&#8221; so that I could pay less. You hear this all the time, often in the context that &#8220;the rich&#8221; should always pay more income taxes. What brings this to mind right now, however, is a <em>Star Ledger <\/em>guest column entitled &#8220;EVs tear up N.J. roads. They should pay their fair share to fix them&#8221; by Matthew Hale (published<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nj.com\/opinion\/2024\/03\/evs-tear-up-nj-roads-they-should-pay-their-fair-share-to-fix-them-opinion.html\"> on-line<\/a> on March 1, 2024, and in print on March 3, 2024). Professor Hale wants to buy a pickup truck, just because, but is ticked that he would have to pay more than his fair share into the Transportation Trust Fund in the form of gasoline taxes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Several years ago, Governor Christie approved an increase in the gasoline tax to fund transit improvements. The tax amount is adjusted annually to produce a fixed amount of revenue. Most recently the tax was increased by 0.9 cents per gallon to 42.3 cents per gallon, making New Jersey the seventh highest. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.njspotlightnews.org\/2023\/09\/nj-announces-state-gas-tax-to-rise-by-0-9-cents-for-total-42-3-cents\/\">NJ\u2019s gas tax to rise in October | NJ Spotlight News<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>All-electric vehicles of course do not use gas, so their drivers do not pay a gas tax. Hale thinks this is unfair, especially because EVs tend to be heavier than other cars, and he has just the solution: there is a proposal to cut the gas tax by 33%, and Hale suggests that the $150 million that would be lost to the TTF be made up by increasing the annual registration fee for the 123,000 EVs registered in New Jersey by $1,220 a year. If you think that&#8217;s fair, ponder these points:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Even if heavier vehicles cause more damage to roads in something close to a direct relationship to the weight difference (and this presumes that the TTF merely repairs existing roads and bridges), surely another factor, likely of more significance, is the distance travelled.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The 33% cut is just an arbitrary number, at least with regard to Hale&#8217;s fairness point. The drivers of the 123,000 EVs (Hale&#8217;s figure; I believe this also includes plug-in hybrids) would be paying one-third of the annual TTF levy while the drivers of the other 2,412,248 vehicles registered in New Jersey would pay two-thirds.<sup data-fn=\"fd2b3b3c-5840-45c5-a269-4b8a5f4e2858\" class=\"fn\"><a href=\"#fd2b3b3c-5840-45c5-a269-4b8a5f4e2858\" id=\"fd2b3b3c-5840-45c5-a269-4b8a5f4e2858-link\">1<\/a><\/sup> This means that the EV owner is paying, in extra registration fees, just under ten times the amount that the average gasoline-powered car is paying in New Jersey gasoline tax.<sup data-fn=\"561d6a61-197e-46db-be93-b7a1f743c24c\" class=\"fn\"><a href=\"#561d6a61-197e-46db-be93-b7a1f743c24c\" id=\"561d6a61-197e-46db-be93-b7a1f743c24c-link\">2<\/a><\/sup> Or put it this way, the $1,220 additional registration fee equates to the tax paid on 2,884 gallons of gasoline (or about 4,305 gallons if the gas tax is actually reduced by 33%).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>And none of this considers the environmental benefit from the elimination of tail pipe emissions.<sup data-fn=\"30af60eb-efe5-4818-804d-3c7d3656b29a\" class=\"fn\"><a href=\"#30af60eb-efe5-4818-804d-3c7d3656b29a\" id=\"30af60eb-efe5-4818-804d-3c7d3656b29a-link\">3<\/a><\/sup> Governments use tax policy to incentivize certain behaviors all the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As a final question about fairness, is it fair that I, who has never been a consumer of the New Jersey public education system, either as a student or parent, should have to pay thousands of dollars a year in school taxes?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-right\" style=\"line-height:0\">Jay Bohn<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-right\" style=\"line-height:0\">March 4, 2024<\/p>\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-footnotes\"><li id=\"fd2b3b3c-5840-45c5-a269-4b8a5f4e2858\">Actually less, because some portion would be paid by out-of-state drivers who purchase gas in New Jersey. <a href=\"#fd2b3b3c-5840-45c5-a269-4b8a5f4e2858-link\" aria-label=\"Jump to footnote reference 1\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li><li id=\"561d6a61-197e-46db-be93-b7a1f743c24c\">I&#8217;m mixing statistical sources, so these numbers are not as exact as they seem. The 123,0000 number comes from Hale&#8217;s editorial. According to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.statista.com\/statistics\/196010\/total-number-of-registered-automobiles-in-the-us-by-state\/\">U.S.: total number of cars by state | Statista<\/a>, based on 2021 numbers, New Jersey had 2,535,248 registered vehicles. I merely subtracted the one from the other. <a href=\"#561d6a61-197e-46db-be93-b7a1f743c24c-link\" aria-label=\"Jump to footnote reference 2\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li><li id=\"30af60eb-efe5-4818-804d-3c7d3656b29a\">I do realize that the production of electricity to charge EVs does itself have environmental impact, but individual internal combustion engines do pollute more than any public utility. <a href=\"#30af60eb-efe5-4818-804d-3c7d3656b29a-link\" aria-label=\"Jump to footnote reference 3\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li><\/ol>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nobody likes taxes, but they would not be so bad if other people would pay their &#8220;fair share&#8221; so that I could pay less. You hear this all the time, often in the context that &#8220;the rich&#8221; should always pay more income taxes. What brings this to mind right now, however, is a Star Ledger &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/2024\/03\/04\/higher-ev-registration-fees-and-tax-fairness\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Higher EV Registration Fees and Tax &#8220;Fairness&#8221;&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"[{\"content\":\"Actually less, because some portion would be paid by out-of-state drivers who purchase gas in New Jersey.\",\"id\":\"fd2b3b3c-5840-45c5-a269-4b8a5f4e2858\"},{\"content\":\"I'm mixing statistical sources, so these numbers are not as exact as they seem. The 123,0000 number comes from Hale's editorial. According to <a href=\\\"https:\/\/www.statista.com\/statistics\/196010\/total-number-of-registered-automobiles-in-the-us-by-state\/\\\">U.S.: total number of cars by state | Statista<\/a>, based on 2021 numbers, New Jersey had 2,535,248 registered vehicles. I merely subtracted the one from the other.\",\"id\":\"561d6a61-197e-46db-be93-b7a1f743c24c\"},{\"content\":\"I do realize that the production of electricity to charge EVs does itself have environmental impact, but individual internal combustion engines do pollute more than any public utility.\",\"id\":\"30af60eb-efe5-4818-804d-3c7d3656b29a\"}]"},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1583"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1663,"href":"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1583\/revisions\/1663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}