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"How can that be?" you might ask. Didn't California enact a massive $5 billion increase in gas taxes just a couple years ago that was sold as necessary to cover the shortfall needed to fund road repairs? . How can they be short by even more than they were then, despite collecting $5 billion more?

This is why voting for tax increases is always a losing proposition, even when it's sold as a very worthwhile cause.

"How can that be?" you might ask. Didn't California enact a massive $5 billion increase in gas taxes just a couple years ago that was sold as necessary to cover the shortfall needed to fund road repairs? [Yes, they did.](https://archive.is/gFnoF). How can they be short by even more than they were then, despite collecting $5 billion ***more***? This is why voting for tax increases is always a losing proposition, even when it's sold as a very worthwhile cause.

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[–] • 3 pts

No, but they pay an extra $100 registration fee over gasoline vehicles.

[–] • 1 pt

If you assume the average driver runs about 12,000 miles a year in a car that gets 30MPG, that's only about 2/5 of what a gasoline car driver pays. Sounds like the tax needs to be about $250 extra.

[–] • 1 pt

It's a flawed system. Driving a car that gets 20 mpg doesn't wear out the road twice as much as a car that gets 40 mpg, but the 20 mpg car pays twice as much. The proper accounting would be by weight. The reason not a single state in the country funds road repairs this way is because the wear and tear increases exponentially with weight. A fully-loaded tractor trailer does as much damage as 9,000 cars but does not pay $5,625 per gallon. Instead, the government mandates that you pay for for the wear and tear caused by trucks, even ones carrying stuff you're never going to purchase.

[–] • 0 pt

It's flawed, but as more and more vehicles become electric, the revenue collected from gasoline taxes is going to continue to fall. If trucks ever go fully electric, the taxes collected on diesel will need to be transferred to a mileage-based system collected at registration.

My comment was more in the vein that electrics don't pay the same share as gasoline cars, even through they use the same roads and cause the same wear as a gasoline car. It's not going to make up shortfalls, just an observation.