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Comment by samwillis | Hacker News Reader

Even better tax based on weight to number of permanent seats ratio. 7 seaters for larger families shouldn't be penalised, but structure it so manufactures can't just throw a couple of fold down seats in the back of a large SUV as a work around.

But everything about road tax needs to change with the reduction of fuel duty due to electric cars. The public haven't seen this coming yet, but it's going to be a difficult transition.

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No, why should I subsidize somebody else's children any more than I should subsidize somebody else's ego booster?

Ignoring the fact that this wouldn't even work because SUVs would just get extra seats to work around the tax structure.

7-seat private buses wear down the road just as much as private tanks, so tax them equally.

Because somebody else's ego booster mobile won't grow up to be a delinquent that commits crimes that directly or indirectly affect you (unless it's evil K.I.T.T.).

Whether societal family planning should, at all, play into road taxes is quite the question, but it's widely accepted that society should bother to educate its children.

As long as we're inventing new taxes, we should tax friction-based braking systems and components, to the point that regenerative braking becomes the norm on all new cars. We're wasting so much energy using friction to stop, rather than electromagnetic fields to induce stopping and regenerating batteries.

I agree entirely, FWIW.

Sounds like a good way to end up with unintended consequences like happened with the chicken tax and the Subaru Brat.

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