How did other countries pass their (high) gas taxes?

Great Debates
1

I’m in the camp that thinks the gas taxes in the US are way too low. CAFE is a joke, and the current crop of cars that are popular here are way too big. I decided years ago that the best way to “reduce our dependence on foreign oil,” as every politician squawks about, is to have high gas taxes. Like, you know, most of the civilized world. I am totally willing to drink that medicine and start paying $10 a gallon for gas if it means finally doing something to impact our national fuel consumption.

However, I understand that the idea of a massive gas tax is hugely unpopular here. My question is, isn’t it hugely unpopular everywhere? Do people in Europe really support paying $10 a gallon? Did they vote on those taxes? Were they passed in a different era? Could they pass now?

2

We are short term thinkers. We are greedy . Let the next generation pay.
We should raise gas taxes and put the money into fixing the infrastructure. It is a jobs program that is needed badly.

3

In a lot of countries you don’t vote on taxes.

4

People don’t like paying any taxes. There isn’t the culture of Taxation=Everything Bad in most of the places I know of in Europe like the US.

Poeple gripe about them and hate them but it’s generally taken for granted that petrol(Gas) and heating fuel is going to be taxed highly.

5

In the UK, it happened quite slowly over time. In the annual budget, fuel duty often went up at a higher than inflationary rate, but it rarely shot up. The same was done with taxes on cigarettes and alcohol.

6

Presumably they voted for people who would pass those taxes, though, right?

7

You vote for a member of parliament.

The party with the most members gets to form a government (usually) in Canada.

If that party holds the majority of seats in the House of Commons then it can pass whatever budget it likes. If that party does not hold the majority of seats then it will need support from at least one other party in order to pass a budget. That budget may, or may not, include tax increases. Rarely will anyone run on a platform of increasing taxes, although it happens. Usually you get to find out after the fact, during the budget, what will be affected and by how much.

There are provincial taxes too, and it works pretty much the same at that level.

8

Sure, but how many legislators run on gas taxes as their ONE issue?

Just because a legislator supports one unpopular measure doesn’t mean the legislator doesn’t support 100 more popular measures.

How many people disagreed with Obama on some particular issue (or simply didn’t know his positions) but voted for him as a whole package, anyway? How many for Bush in '04 or '00?

9

I think the point the OP is trying to make, though, is that if a politician or a party in the US had a track record of upping gas taxes every year, that pol or party would get hammered at the polls.

10

But what if both parties do it?

11

This. Especially in a down economy, where many workers’ wages have remained stagnant. Even in a good economy, any lawmaker in America who dared to suggest anything like what the OP was proposing, would be committing political suicide.

And let’s face it, public transportation in most places outside the northeast sucks balls, so Americans are going to want to remain attached to their cars. Granted, the higher gas taxes could be used to build up that public transportation infrastructure. But that’s presumably something that will happen in the long term and the American electorate isn’t very good at looking at the big picture.

12

Leaffan has already given the answer: most European countries are parliamentary democracies, with stronger party discipline than in the United States. If the party in power is convinced that it needs to do something that is politically unpopular but in the long term national interest, it is much easier for them to do so than in the United States congressional system.

For instance, in Canada, the Progressive Conservative government of Brian Mulroney brought in the Goods and Services Tax, a sales tax, which was massively unpopular. The PCs traditionally ran on a low tax platform, but they were convinced by the economic arguments that the previous system, which included a hidden 13% manufacturing tax, made Canadian industries less competitive internationally. They abolished the manufacturing tax and brought in the GST at 7%.

They did pay for it at the next election, but by that time the PCs were so unpopular that it’s hard to point to that alone as the reason for their defeat. However, the incoming Liberals, who had campaigned on abolishing the GST, crunched the same economic numbers and found that the economic argument in favour of the GST was compelling. They decided not to abolish it, and we still have it, 20+ years later. The Liberals took flak for that about-face, and is still one of the criticisms made about Prime Minister Chrétien, but it wasn’t a career-killer for anyone.

Similarly, in the 90s, Canada faced substantial deficits at both the federal and provincial levels. All governments realised the magnitude of the problems they faced, and instituted major cost-cutting programs to get rid of their deficits. By and large, they succeeded, giving Canada a lot of extra spending power when we needed it in the recent recession. The federal government is currently in a deficit situation, but all of the parties campaigned on plans to bring the government back into a positive budget balance within the next four years or so. Given the past track record, there’s no reason not to think the feds won’t manage to do so, even if it means cost-cutting.

Overall, both these examples illustrate, in my opinion, that one of the strengths of the parliamentary system is that it allows governments with firm majorities to bring in unpopular policies and see how they work, rather than just kicking the can down the road.

13

Exactly. I think CAFE is a prime example of what’s wrong with our political system. An effective solution (gas tax) can’t be implemented if it’s unpopular, but a popular idea (it’s the automakers’ fault for not making more efficient cars!) can get passed even if it’s kinda dumb. I was just wondering how other political systems managed to do something both unpopular and effective.

14

Part of it is that the USA has many levels of government. The states are not rushing to tax something the feds tax and then there are state, county and local taxes added on.

This adds in competition. Already in Chicago you see many people crossing into suburbs or outside of Cook County simply to buy gas. When this happens the city or county with the tax starts to re-examine their tax rates, as the business flies out to the other governmental units which are less expensive.

It’s harder to get a consensus from all agencies to keep the taxes up at a steady level

15

Part of the situation, too, is that the usage patterns for gasoline are MUCH different in countries with higher gas taxes, especially in Europe. In the United States, with its networks of small towns and small cities with generally inadequate (due to geographical considerations, primarily) mass transit, it’s nigh-impossible to get around without a car in any but the largest cities. My impression is that the situation in countries with higher gas taxes is that public transportation is much more geographically feasible (that is, higher population densities) and thus it’s easier to get along with less driving, so people don’t get as concerned over high gas taxes.

16

I don’t think that is a major factor. Car ownership levels are very high in the UK, which has some of the highest fuel taxes, and once you have a car there is rarely any point in taking public transport outside London. Most people see car ownership as mandatory. Average mileage for a UK motorist is about 10,000 miles, compared to 13,000 for a US driver.

Personally, I don’t resent high taxation on petrol as it encourages people to buy more efficient vehicles, and car manufacturors to develop them. This reduces consumption of a limited resource by a useful amount, and reduces carbon emissions.

The recent rise in oil prices does seem to have changed people’s habits a bit. I’ve heard that people are using their cars a bit less (fewer non-essential trips, and combining some others) and that average motorway speeds have dropped.

17

To some extent wages adjust to transportation costs so it’s really just one of many ways to tax people.

18

Yes. It’s awfully difficult to get around the US without a car. Here in Northern Virginia, we are racing to add more rail but the bus and rail networks can’t get you from suburb to suburb very well (e.g. Fairfax -> DC, ok. Alexandria -> DC, ok. Rockville -> DC, ok. Fairfax ->Rockville, bad, quite possibly taking a bus to the train station, taking that train into downtown DC, switching trains downtown, then getting off the train and switching to another bus)

We even lost a heavy rail line in the 20th century that went through Falls Church, Vienna, Herndon, and Leesburg. We could have had another commuter rail route, but no.

19

Boston and NYC do not equal “the northeast.” I assure you, a great many of us in the northeast live without access to public buses, never mind subways/trains. If I couldn’t drive my car, I’d have to rent one because there isn’t even taxi service here.
As for the OP, is it true that Europe generally has adequate public transportation? I’ve always heard that part of the justification for the outrageous fuel costs is that those taxes are to pay for public transportation methods. If the US developed a viable public transportation system from coast to coast, I could see the taxes going up as high as Europe with a lot less protest than if they did so simply for the hell of it without giving people an alternative to driving.

20

European voters are more sensible about a lot of things.