Texas Lege is trying to punish EV owners.

[Liberal In Texas]

Why am I not surprised that instead of encouraging EV ownership with more incentives, they want to impose punitive taxes on them:

About 29% of the money that pays for road building and repairs in Texas comes from the gas tax — which, of course, EV owners don't pay.

The DMV put forward a study suggesting roughly $100 would more than cover EV owners’ fair share of the state’s road responsibilities: “If the objective is to replace the average amount of state motor fuel tax that an equivalent conventional vehicle pays, the amount is estimated to be about $100 a year for an electric vehicle” (p. 6).

The legislature, in turn, ignored the study it commissioned. The Senate passed a $200 EV tax instead, which died in the House in the waning days of the last session. So legislators are back at it — the Senate passed the $200 tax again just this week. An identical bill (HB 2199) will be heard in the House Committee on Transportation on Wednesday.

To be clear, drivers of trucks that get ~20 miles per gallon (mpg) end up paying about $108 per year in state gas taxes, according to Texas Transportation Institute (TTI). Sedans pay, according to the DMV, $63.27 a year.
Texas leaders apparently think EV drivers — regardless of what model they drive — should be taxed at twice the highest rate in Texas and should pay more than three times the tax paid by drivers of conventional cars.
To make a lousy deal even worse, EV owners will have to pay two years of taxes all at once with their vehicle registration...an extra $400 tax bill to pay at the time of purchase.

Frankly, this whole idea of a flat tax isn't fair anyway. It doesn't take into account the weight of the vehicle or the miles driven. For example, the 2019 PHEV I bought in 2018 just got to 12,000 miles. Due to being retired at this point and the pandemic, I don't drive as much. Also the vehicle is a small SUV or a crossover and probably doesn't weigh has much as a Expedition or one of those huge pickups with dual rear wheels. And don't get me started on how this proposal is backward thinking in trying to clean up the dirty air in Texas.

Taxing by miles drive would be easy to determine because every year we have to have a state inspection that is electronically reported to the state. The odometer readings could be used to determine the license fee due annually.

More at: https://douglewin.substack.com/p/texas-legislature-moves-to-raise


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