“Leave them wanting more.”
That popular phrase’s origin is disputed, but whether the speaker was Walt Disney, P.T. Barnum or some other show business magnate, the topic was definitely far removed from a newspaper column about taxing vehicle usage.
Multiple readers responded to Wednesday’s look at the Road Usage Charge Act (House Bill 2963), which would create an advisory committee to launch a pilot program to explore shifting Illinois from a per-gallon gas tax to assessments based on mileage driven.
An example, from Lemont: “Aren’t road use taxes applied to electric car charging stations, just as they are on gas pumps? Federal, state, local? Sales tax? If not, Why not? The system already exists. Just have to equate the energy content of a gallon of gasoline in BTUs to kilowatts. …
“Why aren’t the oil companies putting in charging stations at gas stations? They probably have enough capacity for one station as a trial; more might require electrical upgrades. I read that a Starbucks location was going to install a charging station; just time to get a cappuccino while charging. I also read that the fifth-largest seller of pizza in the country was Casey’s, a gas station/convenience store. Get another slice of pizza while charging.”
That column left those questions unanswered. So here goes!
The U.S. Department of Energy did the math earlier this decade, and the Kansas Legislative Research Department used those calculations in a March 11 report titled “Taxes on Electric Vehicle Charging.” Visit tinyurl.com/taxingEVcharges to get into the formulaic weeds, but in Kansas – where the statewide gas tax is 24 cents per gallon – the working equivalent would be 8 cents per kilowatt hour.
KLRD also used Federal Highway Administration data showing an average of 4.35 gallons per 100 miles driven compared to 37.5 kWh for the same distance.
Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Montana, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Utah have some form of taxes on electricity used as fuel: Iowa’s doesn’t apply to home charges, Kentucky’s is proactively wedded to the National Highway Construction Cost Index, Montana lets charging station owners cover a fraction of each collection for administrative costs and so forth.
The report also lists information on drafted (but not enacted) legislation in other states and incorporates private sector data to broadly address subjects such as improving EV efficiency, the potential impact of a per-kWh tax on EV usage and where full-electric and hybrid owners charge their vehicles, implying even with increases in the number of owners who have home chargers, the availability of faster and more powerful commercial chargers remains an attractive (and therefore more easily taxable) option.
Short answer: The current Illinois EV charging doesn’t substantially contribute to road maintenance. Long answer: Striking fair balances won’t be simple.
• Scott T. Holland writes about state government issues for Shaw Local News Network. He can be reached at sholland@shawmedia.com.
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