Vice: What Replaces the Gas Tax Once Electric Cars Replace Gas

By Ben Richmond, May 28, 2014

As we move to replace gasoline, the states are looking at how they’re going to replace revenue collected via the gas tax. They’re caught in a balancing act, between penalizing people driving electric vehicles and maintaining their roads and bridges.

You can be forgiven for thinking that cars becoming more fuel-efficient, or even all-electric was one of those unqualified goods, but ending a paradigm is going to entail some growing pains. You may be ecstatic at the idea of the air getting cleaner as oil companies and petrostates lose revenue, but even the most militant anti-car evangelist recognizes that we’re going to need roads, even if all the cars run on sunshine and are driving themselves.

Maintenance on roads and bridges is paid for, in part, through the gas tax. More than 90 percent of gross federal Highway Trust Fund receipts and 40 percent of all state revenues for highways comes from revenue collected at the pump. According to inflation-adjusted data from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, gas tax revenue nationwide dropped from $40.7 billion in 2004 to $37.9 billion in 2010.

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