"Won't you pay a little extra to save the planet? No? What a scumbag you are."
Proceeds to dump toxic waste into a river to save $1200
this post was submitted on 20 May 2026
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proceeds to pay $100,000 in lawyer fees to fight a $5,000 ticket for dumping.
They want BEV owners to feel the same financial shit as those who made bad decisions buying massive gas guzzlers. It's a ploy to get people avoid buying BEVs now that they're seeing them gain popularity. They won't be able stop the transition that's coming, BEVs are the future, more efficient, cleaner, resilient to global geopolitical shit.
When they tried this last year it was scrapped because there was no practical way to collect it. Are we going to have a national car registry? That would take more money than it would collect. If they just ask a question on tax filing, I'm just going to lie.
How are you Americans doing car registration? As someone from another country it sounds a little bit crazy to not have a national car registry. Is this on the state level? And if someone from Texas is caught speeding in Arizona, police has to as there for the ID of the owner? Or is there no registry at all? And why shouldn't states be able to collect a tax from their citizens?
Cars and drivers are registered on the state level, yes. There's an agreement that licenses from every state are valid in every other state, and infractions in any state are prosecuted by the jurisdiction in which it happens. There is no national registry, no. States can (and do) collect taxes and registration fees from drivers who reside in that state, but they don't typically collect on behalf of the federal government.
The US is a fake country. States have a massive amount of power, they control vehicle registration, sales tax, school programs... the federal government might as well not exist. The same applies to other so-called countries like Germany.
Germany btw has a central car and driving permit registration.
What's the population density like chief? Based on online stats Germany is 6x more dense than the US as a whole (mostly due to those big states you're comparing it to being < 100/mi².)
Hey there Captain!
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If you combined Texas and California, you would have around the same population.
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There are around six times more licensed drivers in the US than in Germany.
That really has nothing to do with the physical size of a country
There's a reason cops ask for license and registration.
I dunno how this works, but I'd assume this national car registry already exists at the DMV because you have to register your car to drive it, no?
No. The registries are all state-level, though many states do allow other states to query their systems.
Oh I forgot they were state level, I'd guess Congress could either tell states to give them the list of electric cars or ask the states to do the deed for them. I guess that could be a hard task if every system is very different. Not sure.
And each state would "interpret" congress' direction differently.
My understanding is that this time they want to force the states to collect the fee on behalf of the federal government, with the threat that they'll withhold federal funding if the states don't do it. I don't see how they could possibly enforce that either, though.
It's the same way they raised the drinking age to 21 despite there being no national drinking age laws nor a theoretically legal/constitutional method for enacting one. The latter was, obviously, successful.
I don't know the correct answer to this exactly, but given that I've only driven my car (hybrid) about 4k miles total over the last 2 years since I got it (April '24), and paid less (but not $0) in gas tax, but still got hit with the full $130 extra fee is absolutely infuriating. I hadn't even owned it a full year yet but still had to pay a non pro-rated amount (my previous car was a regular gas car).
I'm basically paying almost 6x the rate per mile since I drive so little. I'm the one stuck paying extra because I can't afford to drive enough to justify the full amount, and subsidizing some high mileage driver out there.
I realize tracking mileage has privacy implications, so I don't know a perfect solution, but it fucking SUCKS to get ripped off this hard. While being on disability due to injury and other surgeries, too. I mean I'm still building strength and endurance back to be capable of working again, preferably this year, but I'm the meantime, taxes are fucking killing me.
At least with an EV I would have 0 in gas taxes instead of paying the "not paying gas tax" fee on top of the gas tax- while gas is almost $5 a gallon.
So much bullshit.
I saw someone suggest taxing tires instead of gas, which does seem more equitable, but it would be a big hit on an already expensive purchase.
Does tracking mileage have any privacy implications if it was just a self-report type dealio or would that be too easy to lie on?
I'm guessing the privacy implications come in only if it's the car doing it for you, where it might be taking that data for itself too to add to your ad network profile or whatever.
My current thoughts would be I'd rather report my mileage difference each year or whatever.
I don't mind a road tax. I prefer it over tolls. We already pay gas taxes for infrastructure. My issue is that it is a set price. I honestly think it should be based on the price and weight of your vehicle, and your annual mileage. A subcompact for your daily 20 minute commute is less damaging to the road than a truck traveling 70k miles per year is.
My other problem, no guarantees that it will be used for infrastructure.
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It's never an option to tax the megacorporations that force us to use public roads that they don't pay for to get to work is it?
Good ol corporate socialism. Privatize the gains and socialize the losses.
Tax the megacorps more and use that to maintain roads and expand public transit providing an actual choice for people rather than forcing the individual to buy a car, pay for maintenance, for registration, for fuel, for a license, for tolls, all hust to get to work.
Arkansas already charges an extra $200 annual registration fee for electric vehicles.
Just paid $500 for the privilege in PA ($250/yr, paid upfront).
That's usually the case, as electric vehicles don't pay taxes on gas which is used for roads. Basically a system to make people who drive pay for the roads (and people who drive more will pay more as well).
I would be happy to pay for that purpose, but it's way more tax than I would pay in fuel for the number of miles I drive.
Plus they've been waiving gas tax to make themselves look better on gas prices. So, right now, I'm subsidizing gas drivers.
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Probably an unpopular opinion but this is to offset a federal fuel tax they aren’t getting since it’s an EV. It could be calculated better based on miles but that opens up a privacy issue.
My solution is due away with all fuel taxes and tax tires. They have a know wear rate based on miles, and don’t have any privacy issues like location tracking.
I mean, they have inspections for smog and shit, right? Take your EV in for its smug check and they check its mileage and assess the road use tax.
Take your EV in for its smug check
With the current fuel prices, every EV will pass its smug check :-D
In the USA? Hardly at all and in all states. I was under the same (false) impression before.
Seeing as one truck does the damage of 10,000 cars on the roads, personal vehicles should not be paying the lion's share of road money.
So it shouldn't matter the type of tire.
Those tires are much larger so you could just tax them more. Plus a pneumatic tire can only hold so much weight which is why they are 18 of them on a huge truck. Not to mention more load causes more wear on the tire so they go through them quicker. I mean it’s not perfect, lots of things affect tire wear like road surface, road smoothness, alignment, etc. Maybe you keep the diesel fuel taxes and just tax tires on passenger cars. Maybe give a tax break to small diesel cars to offset the double tax. Just brainstorming…
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I pay over $250/year for that privilege in Washington state. The goal is to make up for the gasoline tax I don't pay - which is fair in principle, because gas tax is used to maintain the roads we all drive on. What's not fair is that it's a flat amount. I drive less than 6000 miles/year. The electric car flat fee is approximately the gas tax a Prius driver would pay to drive twice that far. So to drive an all-electric car I'm being taxed twice as much tax as if I drove a hybrid. Insane.
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Interesting points to me are the fact that this 130 fee is:
- more than what the average fuel consuming car pay (70-90)
- Is on top of what many people already pay in state taxes to drive their car
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