Originally Posted by
cyccommute
I can't agree with your statement "we have begun to incorporate vehicle wight and axle into excise taxes". Colorado has always included weight of the vehicle in registration and ownership taxes. But those fees and taxes are ridiculously low. Colorado charges about $0.01 per pound on motor vehicles. They also charge an ownership tax which is calculated on the age of the vehicle and the original sale price. If you own a new car, the cost of the ownership tax is quite high but drops rapidly with age. By the time the vehicle is from 5 to 10 years old, the ownership tax is negligible.
I also don't agree that we should repeal the gasoline tax at either the federal or state level. If anything we should raise the tax to more completely reflect the cost of motor vehicles and the infrastructure they need. Currently, gasoline taxes and the excise taxes on vehicles in Colorado raise 27% to 33% of the revenue needed to build and maintain roadways. Motorist are receiving a huge subsidy from society to operate their vehicles...to the tune of $3 to almost $4 per dollar they spend on those taxes. We...as I'm also a motorist... most certainly don't "pay our way" for using our vehicles. We don't even pay a significant fraction of "our way".
Perhaps every motorist who passes a bicyclist should hand over $4 because we are actually paying their way
Good to hear about the excise tax thing with axles and weight....i am only familiar with axles being important for highway tolls etc (which is why you see trucks with axles suspended in some cases where/when the load is light.) It does remain a problem for the tax to be at the right level, but that is always an argument about any tax. If Colorado-ans ( ?
) don't feel their state is spending their moneys effectively, more power to lower taxes at each and any level...income, excise, sales tax, whatever.
I still support complete repeal of the gas tax. Improved energy efficiency and the arrival of non-gasoline ruled vehicles means with each passing day the quantity of fuel burned has less and less of a relationship to road presence and wear. The gas tax is many times larger than the profit margins for the oil companies which provide it to us, and it is their investments in new technologies and exploration which has slashed the price of gasoline (and other fuels such as heating fuel and diesel fuel) to such remarkable lows.