Submitted by nastratin t3_yxunbx in Futurology
compounding t1_iwqsi6d wrote
Reply to comment by neverbeaten in UK: Electric car drivers must pay tax from 2025 by nastratin
Tax schemes need to consider the incentives they create. Pushing everyone towards not replacing tires as the tread wears down and becomes less effective is a legitimate safety issue.
And there are tire types that wear far more slowly, such as summer tires over winter… so this would essentially create a large subsidy of the former over the later. Not to mention that companies can capture an arbitrary amount of that tax if they can just make more durable tires that are more expensive but still extend the lifetime of the tire enough to reduce the cost of the tax.
bodhi85uk t1_iwqw96y wrote
They're not talking about a tax on a tyre when you buy a new tyre. They're talking about a tax on the car based on how big the tyres it requires are.
They're saying, big car, big tax, little car, little tax.
VED, also known as Road Tax in the UK, is based on emissions.
neverbeaten t1_iwqz1jl wrote
I actually was talking about a tax on tires at time of sale. I know it isn't perfect as a concept, but it is far more fair and equitable than taxing on weight, length, value, year, displacement, etc. It would be far simpler to implement than taxing a rate per mile driven while also factoring variables like model efficiency and weight and payload (which would be the most fair, but also be impossibly expensive, complex, and raise privacy concerns).
We already use a point of sale tax on fuel and gasoline. This would be similar to execute, but with tires instead of gas.
bodhi85uk t1_iwr5w3c wrote
The person you responded to was talking about tyre size as an indicator of vehicle size, and you started talking about people not replacing tyres that are worn, because they wouldn't want to pay these hypothetical taxes on their big tyres. I know you are advocating for that, but we already have a better system than it.
Taxing based on size, weight, and emissions of a car's known specification from the factory is drastically simpler, and doesn't allow for loopholes like your tax at the time of purchase on tyres, where people just decide not to get tyres. To drive a vehicle in the UK, you must have paid road tax, have insurance as a driver, and a valid MOT (safety check and inspection certificate issued annually).
Taxing tyres isn't any more inherantly fair than the way we do it now. Plus, tyres last years on the average car. You'd have many people going 3/4 years between charges. My Road tax is £220 a year - am I supposed to pay £1000 every 4 years for tyres? Really?
What happens when you get a flat tyre from a nail? You expect people to pay a large premium again? No? Well then how do you stop people taking tyres they drove a nail into themselves as a way of avoiding paying Road Tax?
There's no need to complicate things trying to take into account how much a person is hauling on any given day, or how many miles they drive. You tax tham annually on how polluting their car is, and how big it is as a proxy for how much stress it puts on the physical road surface.
grundar t1_iwsy4ze wrote
> The person you responded to was talking about tyre size as an indicator of vehicle size, and you started talking about people not replacing tyres that are worn
You're responding to the person who started this thread.
Look at the usernames -- both u/neverbeaten. The one talking about not replacing tyres was u/compounding; different person.
This is the original commenter clarifying your misunderstanding of their original comment.
Blunt_White_Wolf t1_iwr7ubb wrote
In UK and most EU countries there are legal requirements for how worn out tyres can be. It's checked whenever your car is in for an MOT/road worthiness check.
compounding t1_iwrgkvo wrote
In the US too. Still bad to set up artificial incentivize people to go all the way to the minimum in conditions they might not otherwise. For example, “all weather” tires essentially become summer only by half tread, and by legal minimums they aren’t performing great in wet weather either. Many don’t go completely to minimums because it’s not smart to let traction/control get the their literal smallest amount the government considers safe, but more will if you put a heavy tax to account for the entirety of the vehicle impact. Not to mention it severely disincentivizing high-wear high-traction tires like winter/ice ones entirely.
neverbeaten t1_iwqyc9p wrote
Yes, these things would definitely need considered. There would need to be some sort of legal minimum level of tread enforced in traffic stops and annual inspections.
Blunt_White_Wolf t1_iwr7mle wrote
In UK there is one (just like in most EU countries).
compounding t1_iwrhsi8 wrote
Still doesn’t fix the fact that it shifts the incentives towards buying tires with low wear but worse traction (because the rubber is less pliable). You can buy some tires that have over 100k tread life, but winter/ice tires only last 3-5 seasons (less than 1/4 the lifespan at best). Making the safer choice significantly more expensive is terrible incentives for a tax scheme.
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