Discuss.
even though I already pay taxes for my cars, I think there should also be a bike tax and registration as well... nothing drastic but when cyclists get all uppity and start demanding a bunch of crap then we have to pay for it somehow... want bigger bike lanes then create a tax to pay for it. Want street cleaners to take care of bike lanes and get the debris out? someone has to earn a wage and pay for the equipment to do that... bike tax and registration could take care of some of that.
>inb4 trolling accusations
>>919389
>what are property taxes
Insurance pays the insurance company, not the state.
Registration is registering your car. If there is a road fee attached to it, it only pays a small part of road constructions and maintenance. The major source of funding for roads is property taxes.
Gas taxes are a substitute for sales taxes. Basically, instead of paying a sales tax that goes towards many things, the sales tax you pay on gas goes towards roads, by taking away the portion that would normally pay for other things. Also, electric cars don't pay for obvious reasons, yet produce as much road wear as a gas car.
Cars don't pay for the cost of roads though car specific taxes and fees. Those only cover a small amount of the costs. Most of it comes from general taxation everyone pays, whether they drive, bike, walk or take transit.
Roads are heavily subsidized.
To put it another way, lets say you got a special coupon for $10 off a buffet, so you get a free $7 buffet meal. But you decide you also want to spend an extra $5 on drinks because you're thirsty and you want more on top of the buffet. Another guy just gets the buffet and water, and pays $0. Just because you paid $3 because you needed more stuff doesn't mean you paid for the other guy's meal, or that your $3 paid for even your portion of the buffet. It's arguable, that $3 doesn't even fully cover the difference between what he got and what you got.
>>919392
$8*
>>919389
Your argument is a bit flawed:
1. "Cyclists" don't just ride bikes. They are regular humans and citizens that need places to live, they need to buy things to survive and be comfortable, and they need jobs to pay for those things. This means they also pay applicable sales taxes, income taxes, and property taxes, which make up the majority of a state's tax revenue. Vehicle taxes bring in less than 5% of the total revenue.
2. Most "cyclists" also drive cars as well as bikes, so they already pay your state's applicable motor vehicle taxes and fees. Why would a state or city want to additionally tax a driver* that decides to use a less road-damaging, traffic-congesting, and air-polluting form of transportation instead of a car? (*"driver" meaning someone who already pays taxes for owning a street-legal car)
>>919383
No, but trucks should be taxed more heavily.
But that won't happen.
They already pay the same "road use fees" as other users.
>>919383
They already do, dipshit. Cagers are gigantic welfare queens.
>>919407
why tho
>>919410
To troll. That anon must have felt that a thread like this can't exist without obvious trolling. Please refrain yourself from taking his bait, no matter how sincere he pretends to be.
>>919413
You know op was baiting in the first place, right?
>>919413
I am not trolling, I seriously think it would be a good source of revenue to provide better infrastructure for cyclists and drivers.... but no much better to just call me a troll... I ride and a drive and would be fine with paying a little more.
>>919417
if you're not, you obviously didn't think it through. Let's see you get a license for your kids the next time they want to ride a bike. The amount of cyclists is small enough, you honestly think it will be a reasonable stream for revenue?
>>919419
I wont lie and say there are no wrinkles to iron out, but I still stand by my opinion and think that cyclists, myself included, should have to pay some more taxes and fees on bikes. I would like to see a 3-5% tax on all bike parts and bicycle registration and licensing requirements.
>>919383
>BAIT
Fuck off
>>919427
>there are some wrinkles
>>919427
Why not a 1000% tax on cager deathmobile parts, murderfluid, and licenses to kill?
>>919430
Why not just round up all cagers and bury them in mass graves? I'd gladly pay a 20% tax on my income in order to subsidize this. I make over $100,000 a year btw.
![dscn1088[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/XrwXAVd.jpg "dscn1088[1].jpg")
>Should cyclists and bicycle owners pay road use fees?
No place in the world has been able to make it financially pay off.
Even a big government with big cycling use place like the Netherlands can't make licencing work financially.
Car infrastructure is subsidized by the state. Getting people to use bicycles, which need only a fraction of the infrastructure of cars is consistently a much better deal for the state.
Pic unrelated, but to liven up a retread topic.
>>919486
Citation needed
>>919428
How is this bait you fucking retard? All he posted was a topic.
>>919432
No need for a tax on us good people, just seize all their assets as well.
regular bicycling in a given metropolitan area tends to cause a net economic gain in said area
>liveable streets
>greater economic development
taxing the activity disincentivizes the activity. why would you want to do that? because it's a matter of fairness?
also, 4$ excise tax on all bicycles sold in my county, which i think makes the local car lobby happy.
>>919405
>dipshit
leave and don't come back until 2025 when you turn 18
>>919383
No emissions, no traffic and no damage to the roads.
No
>>919607
it's a meme you dip
>>919619
Your a meme
>>919383
>taking the bait
What are taxes good for in the first place?
They fund essential public goods and services, they contribute positively to national saving, and many of the things that they fund - from highways and schools to biomedical research and national parks - indirectly create private wealth as well. As Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes put it in 1927, ''Taxes are what we pay for a civilized society."
Regarding 'Bike-Tax':
Using a bicycle for commuting has several positive, well known aspects. Aside from less congestion, better air, less road wear and positive influence on personal health, the government also benefits from cyclists financially. Think about this: Streets and gas in general are heavily subsidized. So if more people are biking, the drain on the states financial resources is less. Each bike commuter is a relief for the governments spending on subsidization.
Another aspect people don't consider when they are making claims like that is, how to finance all that shit. How to apply tax/fee specifically to bicycle users? When they buy one? How many bikes are sold second hand?
So we'd need some sort of registration. You'd need employees doing the registration work = expensive (at least 10$/hour, couple of employees in each city). You'd need durable registration plates = expensive (let's say 10$ for a set). I'm leaving out database costs and lots of other stuff like rent for the office etc. Using this much money on registration alone, already defeats the purpose.
In conclusion, each bike commuter is already a financial gain for the government. Nobody would go through that much trouble for simply riding a bike. The whole idea is not thought through.
I wouldn't have a problem for that as long as only bicycles can ride on said roads
it's cars and trucks that destroy roads, any sort of heavy construction site or trucking depot is usually surrounded by roads that are pothole hell
>>919383
No. The US are already one of the biggest emitters of greenhouse gasses, where cycling is seen as a hobby and not as a viable form of transportation. If you make them pay taxes, even less people will use their bikes. And that is a bad thing, even for cagers (more cars = more traffic, more pollution).
Quite the contrary, actually. Existing fees and taxes for automobiles should increase. With this money you could finance better cycling infrastructure or even a benefit for cyclists (like it exists in some places). This way more people will actually use bikes as a form of transporation, which is a good thing (less traffic, less pollution).
All vehicles should pay for the amount of damage they cause to the road. Trucks cause the same damage as 9600 cars and should pay 9600x the fees of cars. Bikes should pay for the damage they cause. 0.
Fucking entitled car fucks get the facts straight. Car drivers don't even contribute 50% of the cost of roads, the majority is subsidized from general taxation. Cars are SOCIALISM!
>>919799
> And that is a bad thing, even for cagers
Cager logic is that if you make more gridlock, the solution is more gridlock and destroy the gommunist public transport and cycling infrastructure (get a job hippie)
I mean, it worked great in LA didn't it?
Cyclists should be paid for every ride, unlike the cagers who fund terrorism by burning the arab juice.
>>919805
Nature is already being taxed, 5.9 billion tonnes of carbon being put into the air by car use in USA alone.
>>919823
>burning the arab jews
>>919383
Bikes basically do no damage at all to sealed roads, so any taxes for infrastructure maintenance and expansion could probably be levied as transaction taxes on the bikes themselves or key consumables like tyres. There might need to be extra charges for unsealed trails, but that's fairly easy to handle.
The best reason for registration would be to allow police to identify an idiot on a bike (e.g., someone who goes against a red light) without needing to actually catch up with them. It would be nice if this was unnecessary, but some people are fuckwads, whatever transportation mode they're using.
>>919960
>allow police to identify an idiot on a bike
This attitude is nothing but punitive. The public risk is so low as to be negligble and the cyclist is only a real risk to themselves. Police have cars and can easily chase down a cyclist, just like they can chase down skateboarders and pedestrians.
Whereas car drivers running red lights is tediously common and the cause of a huge number of car crashes, maimings and death.
>>919395
Registration fees should be based off of the wear vehicles cause on the road. Road wear the the cube of vehicle weight. At $50/yr for a car my bike registration would cost about 10 cents.
>>919427
I pay 6-7% on all my bike related gear. Its called sales tax. I have a license and what I do on my bike can get me fined and points on my license if i am pulled over. I can also have my bike impounded. This never happens because cops don't give a shit about bikes and they let evolution run its course.
Tare weight registration should be augmented by consumed area taxes, measured in square meters. Further there should be per-mile taxation of all vehicles tracked by black-box GPS which also reports telemetry to police in the event of a crime or accident. Cyclists should be registered so that they are given their reverse-congestion charges as well as reimbursed the above taxes on their idle vehicles left at home.
Motorists want user pays, there it is.
>>919976
Also if the vehicle is not stored on private property, there should be a road usage surcharge for storage.
>>919977
Of course. Prime roadside real-estate doesn't come cheap, and of course there should be congestion charges for blocking a traffic lane.
The car horn should be connected to testicle electrodes.
>>919383
For what? Bikes don't tear up the road like motorized vehicles do. Factor that with the air/water/noise/landfill pollution, all the deadly accidents, citizen obesity from lack of physical activity.... cars should probably be taxed ALOT MORE. Bike commuters should be awarded a tax credit.
>>920005
I will agree to that if you will ride with an electric collar that shocks you if you leave the bike lane.
>>920029
The road is technically the bike lane. All road.
>>920057
You are wrong good sir
>>920108
Have you ever heard of a "car lane"?
>>920029
>every time i need to turn left (US)
>cagers all like 'see the bike lane?'
>>920135
yes, many times. That is why your dumbass needs to stay in your bike lane faggot
>>920135
>car "pool" lane
>>920159
cagers r so stupid, I get this all the time
>>920204
The "pool" part brings in other criteria than just driving a car. They are usually shared with buses as well.
I don't think they should be taxed. I just think it should be legal to hit them.
>>920240
and bicycles, actually
>>919383
Should definetly have licences if they just have to be allowed to exist. They should also definitely have licence plates. This way people can report the way they weave themselves in and out of traffic. Prioritizing themselves over vehicles and pedestrians. Parking their bikes in places not meant for them.
>2016
>not paying road tax
>expecting to have the same rights as road users who pay road tax
lol
>>919794
Time is money, anon. If the entire nation were forced to go down roads and highways at 20 mph the economy would collapse.
I bet if Pol Pot made bicycle riding mandatory as part of his Year Zero utopia you would be an enthusiastic supporter.
>>919486
>Getting people to use bicycles; a much better deal for the state
Only real reason to push this inconvenience.
>>920340
Check your caged privilege
>>920340
>If the entire nation were forced to go down roads and highways at 20 mph the economy would collapse.
Not really - the economies of 1916 and 2016 have more in common than you think. The main differences are that clothing, foodstuffs, and household goods are cheaper because of govt. regulations/subsidies and globalization, the US Federal government spends vastly more money thanks to militarization, the service industry has replaced manufacturing and commodity industries, and we have telecom/computer tech.
BUT - the speed of land transportation has very little to do with those changes. Our land use patterns since 1950 are designed around automobile use, but there's no reason why the US economy couldn't function just as effectively if we had stuck to a transport/land use system based on railroads and streetcars.
>>920357
>1916 US population: 100 million
>2016 population: 320 million
>% of workforce engaged in agriculture 1916: 30%
>% of workforce engaged in agriculture 2016: 1%
Yeah, our economies are so similar, if you disregard all the technological, productivity, and efficiency gains made in the last 100 years due to the transition to an oil-based economy, the green revolution being the most significant. Our entire system is based on just-in-time, time-sensitive shipment of food and goods into the cities and suburbs from hundreds and thousands of miles away. You would be right if you wanted to go back to a population of 100 million and have 30% of those people engaged in agriculture again. But if not, sorry your proposals are retarded and not based in reality. I mean, if your okay with killing of 2/3rds of the population, sure, it might work. But that seems pretty rude. Typical for a cyclist tankie, though.
>>920365
Yes, of course there will be changes over a century, my point is that most things, including population capacity and agricultural productivity aren't really related to highway speeds.
Add 2016 food packaging and refrigeration technology to a 1916 rail system and there's no reason you couldn't get similar efficiency to today's food distribution network.
Grow 1916 cities by 300% without car-based sprawl and they'd do just fine, you'd just have greater density.
>>920340
>If the entire nation were forced to go down roads and highways at 20 mph the economy would collapse.
I was simply talking about how bike registration and taxation is nonsense. Naturally the most bicycle traffic would occur in the cities were congestion is the worst. Distances longer than let's say 15 miles are usually not suited for commute by bicycle. Therefore car traffic on highways and roads wouldn't be constrained significantly.
>I bet if Pol Pot made bicycle riding mandatory as part of his Year Zero utopia you would be an enthusiastic supporter.
Why always shift into the extremes? I also drive a car, I also take the train, and if I have to go somewhere far, I take the plane. It's dumb to assume that one method of transportation is the only thing humanity needs. But if we're talking about traffic in cities, practically half the population has a commute <10 miles. And if you can't even ride 10 miles, you really should take the bike more often ;)
>>919407
My city used to do that but had to stop because the entire program was bleeding money.
The cost of creating and enforcing bike licenses is far greater than whatever income the fees generate.
Besides that, licenses and fees are a disincentive for bike ridership and every sensible city wants to increase ridership as much as possible.
It saves them a dickload of money in the long run thanks to reduced pollution, congestion, errosion, and a fitter populace.
>>920416
Do you have any background information? I'd like to know more about it.
>>920336
yeah because all that is really enforced on death cages which already have plates
If someone steals your bike and you go to the police they'll tell you to forget about the bike and will never even investigate properly. That happened to me.
But if someones steals your car it's jail time and he's getting caught and theres a case opened up etc
So why should i pay tax if i dont get the same public service for private property loss?
>>920654
It's kind of like the difference between stealing someone's horse in the Old West and stealing someone's bicycle in the same time period and place. One is essential to survival, the other is a toy for people with free time.
>>920338
>Implying there is any jurisdiction on Earth which levies road tax
Not really, cyclists cause an immeasurably small amount of road damage and use compared to cars. Most cyclists already own and drive cars as well as bikes so are already paying for it. Also it just seems silly, noone is taxing and charging pedestrians for using sidewalks, at least, not in the same way that say car registration fees work.
>>920659
Meh, A bike may not be essential for survival but neither is a car. Plenty of people live without cars, even outside of major cities with good public transport. Personally if someone stole my bike it would be a bigger inconvenience than if someone stole my car. I think the difference in sentencing though just comes down to the difference in monetary value between cars and bikes more than anything else though. And perhaps just because car theft is easier to prosecute because of vin's and registration and whatnot.
>>920694
Also, by immeasurably small I mean that it is so small that it would cost more to collect than its value.
>>920694
Does the government know what Noone is up to?
