this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2025
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Google says California gas and sales tax together are only about 71¢/gallon.
While we understand gas is expensive in California, relative to the rest of the us, it’s not expensing globally and 71¢/gallon is not much tax globally. The tax really needs to be much higher, for the cost of the roads and other costs to society. Google also claims this tax covers 80% of California road maintenance, so I’d argue it needs to be 25% higher. But that’s only maintenance, not new construction, and doesn’t at all cover the harm done, so really ought to be much higher
California has the highest state gas taxes in the us so the rest of us are much worse.
Gas taxes that don’t even cover road maintenance are too low.
Gas taxes that don’t cover the externalised cost of emissions are also too low. But I don’t think any jurisdiction taxes that way.
My bigger objection are people using this argument to try to add unfairly high EV taxes
No, EV taxes don’t need to cover road maintenance if gas taxes don’t, and no, EV taxes don’t need to be extra high because of a weight penalty, when ice pickups weigh more and the difference is a rounding error relative to big trucks
But I do believe in vice taxes as a way to guide consumer choices. The most fair choice is to tax all road vehicles by miles and weight, without regard to technology, plus a vice taxes on gasoline (like we do with alcohol) to account for the damage it does to society and to discourage use.
Agreed.
`miles * weight * small number