Comment 109731

By kevlahan (registered) | Posted February 25, 2015 at 17:24:56 in reply to Comment 109730

The discussion is about taxes and fees associated with driving, taxes that wouldn't be collected if people didn't own cars, or drove less (and there is actually essentially no revenue, apart from paying $80 every five years, with simply holding a driver's license).

Income taxes, property taxes and HST would continue to be collected, even if no one drove.

But it is still true that many (although not all) drivers (people who are able to drive) do pay proportionately more for roads, even if the actual percentage more is quite small and the extra amount does not come close to the cost of driving to society. As I mentioned it is easy to find cases of a driver paying proportionally less for roads: just compare a driver who pays little property tax or income tax, with a wealthy non driver who pays very high property tax and income tax. The average driver does pay proportionately more than the average non driver.

If you are talking about "drivers" as "people holding licenses" then almost every adult is a driver, but the relevant point is how many km and where and when they drive in terms of the benefit they derive and the costs they impose on society. For example, I have held a driver's license for 28 years, but didn't own a car for much of that time (I just rented a car when I needed one). That is very different from someone commuting 150km every day of the week ... 40,000km per year).

Comment edited by kevlahan on 2015-02-25 17:37:52

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