The main issue with a driving tax, aside from the practical issues of implementation, is that it's extremely regressive. We have very low or no sales tax on food other necessities, for the obvious reason that poor people need to buy those things and it is immoral to increase their cost, as doing so directly impacts the ability of poor people to access those things.
Poor people also need to drive. Worse, this tax will also drive up the price of other commodities, because those commodities are transported by roads on trucks that run on gas, gas that now costs more.
And speaking of evil taxes, there's one in the works that's arguable even worse, in terms of the underlying logic if not the net effect:
Biden Expresses Support for Annual Tax on Billionaires’ Unrealized Gains
Currently, when a stock is sold, there's tax on that sale based on the increase in value from when you bought the stock and when you sold it, the capital gains tax. Emphasis on
sold, because, well, that's when you actually make money off that ownership. If you have $1 in cash a stock worth $1,000,000, you theoretically have a net worth of a million and one dollars but in actual terms have only a dollar to you name, you can't access the value of that stock until you sell it, incurring a tax. This is why most "billionaires" have nowhere near that much money actually on hand, it's all tied up in stocks, stock that would rapidly plummet in value if they started selling all of them.
Lately, democrats have started proposing that unrealized capital gains be taxed, IE, taxing stock owners for the increased value of their stock, regardless of if it's actually sold or not, on justified with rethoric about how billionaries are "avoiding" taxes by holding stocks rather than selling them. There is a slight truth to this in that there are ways to avoid the worst tax hits by just taking out loans instead of selling stocks, since the bank is fairly confident Elon Musk will be able to pay them back. It's essentially like arguing that when I elected not buy a new star of battletech minis and instead traded some minis I'd already bought with a friend, I defrauded the state government by not paying the sales tax I would have paid if I'd bought the mechs directly, and I should be charged that sales tax regardless of what I do or don't buy.
freebeacon.com
