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Comment by bkjelden | Hacker News Reader

My biggest reservation with oil/gas taxes is that consumption taxes tend to be very regressive. Car ownership is already a tremendous burden for the poor in the US that isn't present in other countries - in all but a handful of US cities a car is pretty much required to hold down a job.

So while I like the idea of raising money for clean energy, I would be more supportive of a policy where the burden isn't disproportionately shouldered by the poor.

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It could be that carbon consumption is fairly widespread between rich and poor: in other words, Bill Gates does not consume 100000 times the carbon that Joe Schmoe does, but maybe only 10 times as much, or perhaps even less. This means that to actually make a dent in usage, you have to make the tax hit everyone.

Of course, you could also try and compensate by lowering income taxes, or increasing the EITC or something, so that the tax is offset for the poorest, but still give them an incentive to use less carbon.

That's what this conservative commentator suggests: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/06/upshot/the-key-role-of-con...

But... politics. Flagged.

> Bill Gates does not consume 100000 times the carbon that Joe Schmoe does

People lile Gates and Buffett travel in their private plane, they do consume more carbon compared to the average joe.

It's likely, but do you see the point? They earn orders of magnitude more and have a zillion times more in the bank. But in terms of carbon - or food, to pick something else - they may not consume that much more than the average person. Put another way, 10000 Joe Schmoes are going to consume way more carbon or food than 1 Bill Gates. So to actually curb carbon usage, you're going to have to take that into account. One way to make it 'fair' would be to offset those costs in other ways: if you continue to drive as before, it'll be neutral, but if you curb your driving, you'll actually come out ahead financially. That's the theory, at least.

what about carbon foot print of Gates' businesses -building and running costs

There are many ways to set up a revenue neutral carbon tax, but if all the revenue is distributed back to citizens equally, Microsoft pays the tax, but does not get a refund.

Businesses that are large carbon emitters have to raise their prices, and the market cares about CO2 a little bit more.

> It could be that carbon consumption is fairly widespread between rich and poor

It's less clear that oil consumption is equal for the rich and the poor. The rich person can afford a Tesla and have zero gas usage. The poor person is driving a '93 Ford Taurus that barely passes environmental air quality standards, let alone having any sort of fuel economy.

That's a good reason to subsidize public transport and a poor reason to subsidize driving.

Weren't people paying the equivalent of $10/barrel more just a few months ago? It seems unlikely that a new crop of people could suddenly afford the multi-thousand dollar, ongoing investment in a vehicle because they'd pay $0.25/gallon less for gas.

Besides, we've hidden the 'true cost' of driving from consumers by refusing the raise the current fuel tax. It doesn't even come close to paying for the roads. We should raise the tax on it for that alone.

When I read about sales taxes and arbitrary taxes on commodities I think just like you have said.

If he wants a tax that doesn't hit consumers he should just raise federal corporate taxes.

In fact, removing subsidies would be a good start.

A tax on consumers is fine if it's used to guide people away from consumption of that product. We do that for Tobacco, for example.

The less oil the world uses, the better.

You don't need cigarettes. You do need energy.

oil !=== energy

Corporate tax is a political sham, a sleight of hand by politicians to make taxes more palatable to voters. There is no such thing as a tax on corporations that's not a tax on people. Corporate income is either paid out as salaries or dividends, or spent on purchasing goods from other firms (so eventually only dividends and salaries). Taxing corporations means reducing salaries and reducing dividends.

The corporate tax also benefits big firms with overseas offices and armies of tax accountants and lawyers, at the expense of small and medium sized businesses that can't afford to play the tax avoidance game.

We should eliminate the corporate tax. Make it revenue neutral with equivalent small bumps in the income tax. But it actually doesn't generate much revenue to begin with, more evidence that it's not worth the trouble.

It's 11% of the federal budget [1]. We'd be talking about a steep rise on payroll and income taxes to replace it.

It would actually be a lot more than 11% if it wasn't for avoidance by multinationals like Apple.

[1] - http://www.cbpp.org/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/pol...

When you compare it to the income tax, that's not a big percent. The corporate tax is equivalent to an income tax on people, but with the strange property that it distributes the burden between the classes (shareholders vs employees, though there is a lot overlap) through the market instead of by law. Depending on the situation in a particular firm, the burden might be wholly on employees or wholly on shareholders, but probably somewhere in-between. This is all ignoring that some of the burden could be shifted to consumers too, depending on how competitive the market is and what the margins are.

As I said, you would raise the income tax on the middle to high brackets to offset abolishing the corporate tax. You'd be taxing the same people, for the same money, with much less hassle for everyone.

What does the corporate tax accomplish that an equivalently higher income tax does not? It's the same money.

It would of course be far better than that. The low corporate tax rate would attract vast numbers of relocations. Companies like Pfizer would stop fleeing the US; major corporations in other nations would relocate.

It's really sad that our politics is so dysfunctional that we'd rather hold on to this harmful fiction of a tax, just so some politician can play people against each other, than make common sense reforms that wouldn't even change the total tax level.

Cutting the federal budget 11% would throw us all the way back to 2014 levels. I don't know if the system could handle that kind of shock.

Apple is a primary example of his point... If corporate tax isn't eliminated or reduced, will Apple ever put that cash to good use? No! It doesn't want to lose billions, so it'd rather the money sit there then lose it. Removing the tax in that case would stimulate the economy with billions of dollars in new private capital (without devaluing the money already out there [printing money]).

Removing subsidies would be a huge start.

Would that include the subsidies for solar rooftop installations, wind energy projects and electric vehicles?

Problem with that approach is that you quickly get into "subsidies I like" and "subsidies I dislike" territory.

Lack of oil/gas taxes encourages wasteful spending elsewhere. When gas is cheap why not buy a house in the suburbs that's a 90-minute commute to work and a gas guzzler vehicle?

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/urbs/the-conservative...

Maybe progressively tax car ownership based on car's age/price?

This is already done through property taxes in many states. Unfortunately much of this money is used for things other than improving transportation.

So tax consumption at the pump progressively. Your first 10 galls are taxed normally, then progressively add more tax every whole gallon above that.

Poor people will buy in 10- gallon instances, less poor people won't bother and will just fill it up.

Or tax on displacement at the DMV. Anything from this year on above 1.3 liters gets taxed progressively more so that gas gas-sippers pay relatively little and gas guzzlers pay lots more at the DMV (registration).

[edit] fixed word usage.

Your definition of spendthrift is flipped. spendthrift (n) a person who spends money in an extravagant, irresponsible way.

thanks! fixed.

This is often very had to track. The solution is income tax breaks for the poor. Australia did this with our carbon pricing. The tax free threshold(income below which you're not taxed on) was raised a significantly to compensate the poor without having to track their actual usage.

Displacement taxes are a terrible idea and lead to unintended consequences. Displacement has only a weak correlation with carbon emissions. Which is worse: a 1.3l engine driven 30000km per year or a 5.0l engine driven 3000km per year? And if the manufacturer adds a turbocharger to the 1.3l engine the real-world fuel consumption will rise significantly even though displacement remains unchanged.

But people aren't trading trips. People have to go where they need to go. It's better to have the person travelling 30000 year do it in a less polluting vehicle over the person driving 3000.

-Poor people will buy in 10- gallon instances, less poor people won't bother and will just fill it up.

Wrong. I'd pump 10, shut the pump off, and pump another 10, etc. Why pay the tax if I can break up the full tank into a few transactions.

Most credit cards don't allow consecutive charges at gas stations from the same holder. Not in my experience anyway.

You could pay cash multiple times, but then you'd have to go into the hut a couple of times. Yes you could game it, but people with money won't bother over a couple of bucks.

> Most credit cards don't allow consecutive charges at gas stations from the same holder. Not in my experience anyway.

I have never had this issue. The gas pump stops pumping at $99 and forces a restart. Back when gas was $4/gallon it took 3 restarts to fill up the boat. :/

Interesting, it might have to do with some kind of likelihood of fraud occurring at a particular location score for the service station. So stations in areas where more stolen CC fraud occurs, these stops are in check.

Fortunately, any kind of displacement-based tax on vehicles would have to be a state-run affair (A Federal Department of Motor Vehicles would be far, far too Kafkaesque or perhaps even Lovecraftian). So good luck, California, you seem to like trying out this kind of stuff :-)

Although excise taxes that you already pay at the DMV are probably a decent proxy for engine displacement already. 5.4L V8 pickup truck = $45k sticker price, vs $15k 1.3L shitbox subcompact.

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