Experienced wrote: pooltec wrote: I will clarify my original question. An f150 gas fills up and drives 900km. How much tax was paid on the 140litres of gas they put in the tank. An F150 lightening is charged up and lets pretend they can drive 900km on that charge. How much tax did they pay on that 40 minute charge?
Great questions!!
In today's world it is probably difficult to get a precise answer with HST and carbon taxes cause it would depend on the source that produced the electricity. That said, the implication of your question is that the tax to fill up you F150 is more than the tax(s) on electricity to pay for an EV charge to drive a similar difference distance. That is a view that I share. In fact the evidence is quite clear in that I mentioned in previous posts, I expect the payback period the IONIQ5 I ordered to be about 2 years. This would not be the case if the tax revenue was the same for oil and electricity consumption.
Your original question is also a great question.
IMO, I can't see the political environmental zealots trying to slow down the conversion to EVs any time soon. If this proves to be true, then Government will be faced with increasing deficits if they want to keep the roads in the same shape as they are now (which frankly in many parts of the country aren't that great to begin with) or else they have to find another source of taxation.
My guess, and it is just a guess, is that they will likely find a way to recoup the lost tax revenue either through an increase in the carbon tax or something like that. From an Economics 101 perspective, this would make sense to the zealots since it would change the relative price of fuel in favour of electricity especially if more of the electricity is sourced from renewables and encourage even faster adoption of EVs.
The scary part of such a scenario is that during the transition and after, such a tax would have an inflationary impact which would hurt lower income people and those on fixed income the hardest. Given the aging population, this could become a big problem.
It will be real interesting to see how all this plays out and you have put your finger on the achilles heal with what is going now. Having been a keen follower of politics over the years to look at the implications for investment, I suspect that the problem you mentioned is well known to the political zealots and they are simply kicking that can down the road (pardon the pun).
As is so often the case, future generations will pay for the silliness of today.