Australian (ASX) Stock Market Forum

Electric cars?

Would you buy an electric car?

  • Already own one

    Votes: 10 5.1%

  • Yes - would definitely buy

    Votes: 43 21.9%

  • Yes - preferred over petrol car if price/power/convenience similar

    Votes: 78 39.8%

  • Maybe - preference for neither, only concerned with costs etc

    Votes: 37 18.9%

  • No - prefer petrol car even if electric car has same price, power and convenience

    Votes: 24 12.2%

  • No - would never buy one

    Votes: 14 7.1%
  • Total voters
    196
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Jack Aubrey said:
The other great myth in this area is that we somehow pay for the Age Pension through our working lives and collect it at retirement, as if there was some account somewhere where a proportion of the tax we pay has our name on it and is managed separately. This WAS the case before 1971 but the High Court found it to be unconstitutional. The Age Pension is paid from consolidated revenue just like all welfare and tax transfers (including drought relief, Newstart and Franking Credit rebates), funded by the taxes (income, GST, CGT, company tax etc.) levied on us all in the year it is paid out. A tax is a tax is a tax and spending (or tax forgone) is spending. The labels that government puts on taxes and levies are totally irrelevant and just there to keep certain people happy (or in the dark).
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With regard the Age Pension, here is the story behind it.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-05...ical-time-bomb-70-years-in-the-making/5480154
From the article:
As the historian Rob Watts points out in his book The Foundations of the National Welfare State, what looks like groundbreaking Chifley welfare reform was really just a smokescreen for unpopular wartime tax rises on lower income earners.

The Menzies government folded the National Welfare Fund money into general revenue a few years later. (It is good budget practice not to hypothecate specific revenues to specific programs). But the fund remained in name until the 1980s .

From memory, the last of the funds actually attributed to the scheme were removed by Fraser.
https://www.smh.com.au/money/super-...mised-a-pension-for-life-20161111-gsn07y.html

The Hawke/Keating Government removed the National Welfare Fund from the statutes in the 1980's. Then started the superannuation guarantee scheme.
 
qldfrog said:
Would not oppose you on that one, billions in diesel excise rebate, free gift of ore to play with with just paying for the sold part, yes a proper mining tax would have been welcomed but i still believe we can not create an industry by throwing billions
I can not find a single example of this ever working
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NASA ?
 
SirRumpole said:
LOL. The government, who ever is in , will say what they like and the public has to wear it.
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I am just pointing out a little hypocrisy.

eg. It's been mentioned here before that Electric Vehicles owners might be "free loading" by using roads while also avoiding the fuel Excise.

but, if that is true then it would be wrong to expect non road users to pay the fuel excise.

Fuel Excise is either related to roads (in which case miners etc should be exempt other wise we are freeloading off them), or its got nothing to do with roads (in which case the complaints about EV's freeloading are irrelevant).
 
One answer to the roads funding issue is to accept that roads (and rail and every other bit of public infrastructure) are genuine public goods - ie everyone benefits whether they use them or not (which is probably the case). If so, there is a good argument for full public funding from consolidated revenue.

If not, there are options like tolls and congestion charging and direct taxing of vehicles (rego). Or perhaps we can do both like we do now?
 
Jack Aubrey said:
One answer to the roads funding issue is to accept that roads (and rail and every other bit of public infrastructure) are genuine public goods - ie everyone benefits whether they use them or not (which is probably the case). If so, there is a good argument for full public funding from consolidated revenue.

If not, there are options like tolls and congestion charging and direct taxing of vehicles (rego). Or perhaps we can do both like we do now?
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If EV's reach a critical mass I can see the government requiring that they be fitted with meters reporting how far they travel, and the owners getting a bill at the end of the month in lieu of fuel excise.
 
Value Collector said:
I am just pointing out a little hypocrisy.

eg. It's been mentioned here before that Electric Vehicles owners might be "free loading" by using roads while also avoiding the fuel Excise.

but, if that is true then it would be wrong to expect non road users to pay the fuel excise.

Fuel Excise is either related to roads (in which case miners etc should be exempt other wise we are freeloading off them), or its got nothing to do with roads (in which case the complaints about EV's freeloading are irrelevant).
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Well whatever the way you argue, if revenue is depleted by EV's not paying fuel excise it has to be made up some other way, never stand between a government and a bucket of money.
 
SirRumpole said:
Well whatever the way you argue, if revenue is depleted by EV's not paying fuel excise it has to be made up some other way, never stand between a government and a bucket of money.
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Maybe an excise on Tyres ??? or maybe we tax animal products like we do cigarettes, I would be happy with that hahaha
 
SirRumpole said:
Reducing company and personal tax avoidance would be a good start.
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As would work avoidance and welfare dependence.:roflmao:
But getting back to electric cars, the Hyundai Kona seems like it has a good range, but the price and no ability to feed back into the grid is a stumbling block. IMO
 
I think electric cars are the future of engineering. I am sure that all equipment will switch to electricity, as it is cheap. As a student, it is very convenient for me to travel by electric car.
 
Pedal cyclists need 2000 hours steering experience, yearly traffic rule exams with zero tolerance, citizen arrest and solitary prison in worst cases.
 
IFocus said:
Don't want to start a bun fight but governments do subsidise mining fuel excise is rather large alone see link which will likely to be biased but still valid.
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If failing to tax fuel used in mining amounts to a subsidy of mining then rationally any failure to tax electricity used for EV charging represents a subsidy of EV's.

I thought it was the case that most business inputs are untaxed? Businesses claim back GST right? Not much different to not taxing fuel used to run a mine.

Personally I'm confident enough of the future viability of EV's that I see no need to force their adoption by means of taxes or anything else. Same as we didn't tax typewriter ribbons in order to bring about mass adoption of computers. Etc. :2twocents
 
Smurf1976 said:
I thought it was the case that most business inputs are untaxed? Businesses claim back GST right? Not much different to not taxing fuel used to run a mine.
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I don't think that's quite the point.

A mine can claim the full cost of fuel as a tax deduction, PLUS they get back the excise that they pay on diesel fuel, the reason for that is (they say) that diesel fuel excise is allegedly going towards roads which the miners don't use, but as has been discussed that is nonsense as the diesel fuel excise just goes to general revenue from which everyone benefits.
 
SirRumpole said:
I don't think that's quite the point.

A mine can claim the full cost of fuel as a tax deduction, PLUS they get back the excise that they pay on diesel fuel, the reason for that is (they say) that diesel fuel excise is allegedly going towards roads which the miners don't use, but as has been discussed that is nonsense as the diesel fuel excise just goes to general revenue from which everyone benefits.
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The issue surely is to ponder why diesel etc is taxed at a higher rate than pretty much any other product except alcohol and tobacco?

That's the real issue. No other normal business input has a special high tax applied to it and of direct relevance there's no comparable rate of tax on other energy sources including other fossil fuels. Given that diesel as a means of generating power is cleaner than coal, and integrates far better with renewables, it seems a tad odd.

The only rational explanation I've ever been able to see is that it's effectively an import tax given that coal and gas are locally produced but oil is substantially imported. Fair enough, I can see some logic in that, but then we've dropped tariffs on everything else so it's rather inconsistent to retain that approach only with petroleum fuels and then not all such fuels but only some.

Go forward to sometime in the 2030's and fuel excise ends up as, in practice, a tax on the poor. Once EV's become half the vehicle fleet, those paying that excise will mostly be the poorer half of society. A few exceptions but in general that will be the case. That'll give politicians an interesting dilemma........
 
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