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neverbeaten t1_iwqz1jl wrote

Reply to comment by bodhi85uk in UK: Electric car drivers must pay tax from 2025 by nastratin

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.

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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.

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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.

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