Saskatchewan: $150/Year Road Tax for EVs Effective October 1

[N.Y.R.]

I'm sure there is more road damage caused by their knuckle dragging than by EVs. The real fact is nearly all major road damage is caused by semis, not passenger cars:

“The damage due to cars, for practical purposes, when we are designing pavements, is basically zero. It’s not actually zero, but it’s so much smaller -- orders of magnitude smaller -- that we don’t even bother with them,” said Karim Chatti, a civil engineer from Michigan State University in East Lansing.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1379537567553490944

Saskatchewan's 2021-22 budget: Winners and losers

While the government is laying on the spending, a few groups will doubtless be left unhappy with this year's provincial budget.

thestarphoenix.com

Loser: Electric vehicle owners​

What surer sign that electric vehicles are no longer a novelty than a new tax? EV owners avoid the gas pumps, but starting Oct. 1 they will pay an annual tax of $150 when they register their vehicles. The tax is meant to account for the wear and tear vehicles cause on the roads. Money raised is to be pooled with fuel tax revenue earmarked for highway maintenance.

The new tax will only apply to passenger vehicles for now, but the province has indicated it will continue studying collecting tax at charging stations instead, and applying it to commercial vehicles and inter-jurisdictional trucking

 

[TechnoBabble]

Gouge gouge gouge! This is just the begining trust me. Ontario will probably triple this tax. Govenment is puting out their greasy feelers to see how the ev community reacts. If we take this without complaining, eventually more and more fees will be introduced. What a great way to get people to move to green energy.

 

[pb2000]

A consumption tax is a good thing, so long as its proportional. Generating a report on the kms traveled within a geofenced area (province/state) would probably be trivial and you just pay your tax accordingly.

 

[gforce2002]

I’m curious how much money the SK government spent fighting carbon pricing all the way to the Supreme Court.

 

[JVINFL]

I am sure we will see this soon in the US. My thinking is that you will need to have the odometer read as a process of getting you yearly vehicle registration and a ”fee” added based on the previous years reading. I can hear the sucking sound almost now coming from my wallet.

 

[Vawlkus]

I am sure we will see this soon in the US. My thinking is that you will need to have the odometer read as a process of getting you yearly vehicle registration and a ”fee” added based on the previous years reading. I can hear the sucking sound almost now coming from my wallet.

You already have it in a few states.

 

[Tessaract]

This is a terribly regressive taxation scheme. It's disproportional and projudicial.

Fair would be to tax all vehicles based on road damage, which could be based on vehicle weight and yearly kilometers driven. That way the vehicles that caused the damage would actually pay their fair share.

 

[Vawlkus]

This is a terribly regressive taxation scheme. It's disproportional and projudicial.

Fair would be to tax all vehicles based on road damage, which could be based on vehicle weight and yearly kilometers driven. That way the vehicles that caused the damage would actually pay their fair share.

Yeah, but that’s a lotta math, and governments HATE doing math.

 

[Dolfan44]

I emailed my MLA to let him know how I felt about this. Governments all over the world are giving out thousands of rebates to encourage people to move towards sustainable energy solutions and here in Saskatchewan we have effectively no rebates and now we're actively disincentivizing (might have just made up a word) the purchase of EVs when there are only 400 people in the province who own one. Crazy.

I actually understand the idea that if everyone moves to EVs you need to shift the model you use to pay for road maintenance, it's just a very strange time to make that shift.

 

[Tessaract]

Yeah, but that’s a lotta math, and governments HATE doing math.

Fortunately, the math has already been done in studies by people who like doing math and are good at it. So governments just need to grab some cohones and do the right thing, rather than play politics, which is what I smell going on in Saskatchewan.

 

[Vawlkus]

Fortunately, the math has already been done in studies by people who like doing math and are good at it. So governments just need to grab some cohones and do the right thing, rather than play politics, which is what I smell going on in Saskatchewan.

Cahones in a government official?????
So seldom happens it's damn near impossible.

 

[GregoryK]

Seems fair to me. I'm in Ontario and we should pay to use the public roads. Right?
Who pays to fix those potholes with tar. Who pays for the environmental impact the rubber - shedding off these heavy cars - does.
We should pay our share. Stop complaining about it.

 

[Lon12]

"We should pay our share" implies that you want to pay for what you use. This tax in Saskatchewan is definitely not doing that fairly.

 

[GregoryK]

"We should pay our share" implies that you want to pay for what you use. This tax in Saskatchewan is definitely not doing that fairly.

I hear you. In Ontario we pay a road tax of 14.7¢ per litre on unleaded gasoline. That's over $7 every time I fill up.

 

[Blu-Ion]

I've been warning this day will come for a while
Gas tax is not proportional either, I still buy a lot of gas in summer for my boat, it's not like my boat uses public roads. regardless of the system people will still complain.
The cost to build and maintain roads is say $25Billion (I don't know I'm making this number up), the government will get that money whether you like it or not, there's not getting around it

 

[pb2000]

Gas tax is not proportional either, I still buy a lot of gas in summer for my boat, it's not like my boat uses public roads. regardless of the system people will still complain.

If you are fishing for commercial purposes, I think you can get purple gas, but as for pleasure craft, you'll just have to be miserable about that unfair tax as you cruise the lake soaking up sunshine.

 

[Blu-Ion]

Yup, trading it in for a tug boat!

 

[Vawlkus]

I've been warning this day will come for a while
Gas tax is not proportional either, I still buy a lot of gas in summer for my boat, it's not like my boat uses public roads. regardless of the system people will still complain.
The cost to build and maintain roads is say $25Billion (I don't know I'm making this number up), the government will get that money whether you like it or not, there's not getting around it

That’s not something that needs to be debated.

What’s a problem is both that EVs get hit harder than gas cars for it (2x to 6x in some places), and that the gas tax itself isn’t solely earmarked for road upkeep. It gets thrown into the general tax money pot and spent on whatever. I’m not against that kind of tax being included in my yearly registrations, but it has to be proportional.