General Road and Highway Discussion

[SammyOES2]

It doesn't make a lot of sense to me to view sales tax on gasoline as some kind of a user fee to pay for roads. The gas tax is intended to be something like that, but HST applies on everything- I can't think why, in the specific case of gasoline used for driving, it would go to anywhere besides general revenue.

It should go to general revenue, that's not really my point.  But in the context of "the amount of subsidies" discussion, I really don't understand why you wouldn't count at least a portion of the revenue that comes directly from people driving.  It has a real effect, since w/o driving a chunk of that money wouldn't be generated as revenue.  I mentioned examples above, but another big one is for out-of-province drivers.  The high-level point being if you want to talk about the subsidies that drivers receive, you can't ignore a chunk of revenue that they generate for the Government (imo).

As for the question of whether money not spent on gas or cars would instead be spent on something else, some of it would indeed be saved or invested- but, in Ontario lately, not much. Households' savings rates are not particularly high right now. The majority of it would be used for consumption.

There's a non-trivial amount that wouldn't be.  Low-income drivers that consume a bigger proportion of tax-exempt goods.  High-income drivers that would save the excess money.  Tourists that would spend their money at home instead.  Etc.

I can understand that, for someone who drives, it's not very important whether the costs of that come from charges to him as a motorist, or taxes paid by him as a taxpayer. And, given that most Ontarians drive, that may well be good enough. If you're not a driver, though, or you're a light user of the roads, you're probably subsidizing drivers or more-frequent drivers.

Yes.  My point isn't that its totally fair.  Just that the frequent claim by some people in this forum (and in that opinion piece) is that drivers are "enormously subsidized".  And that's just nonsense.  Edit: And also note that when it comes to Government services, most of them *SHOULD* be subsidized in some way.  If they're being provided by the Government we should generally consider them important and want to offer services more fairly to our citizens.  It's the same reason I argue with people complaining about 'the subsidies' that public transportation receive.

That probably isn't a big problem (how much are the subsidies likely to be, really? is anyone living in poverty because of all the taxes he pays to support other people's driving habits?). But it isn't efficient, and if we ever wanted to curb driving in any real way, the way the costs are paid would need to change. We don't, though: most people are happy with the current system, there's no political will to make driving more expensive for drivers.

I'm really skeptical of the claim that it isn't efficient from a direct financial point of view like many people here argue.  Or at least, that its less efficient than most other services we receive (both public and private).  The one area where I think the argument is true is when looking at the environmental externalities of driving.  But in that case I don't think mile-based usage fees are the best answer because I don't think it sets the right incentives.  And I think the problem is much bigger than just driving vs. public transportation.