Plug-in vehicles and the future of road infrastructure funding in the United States

Jerome Dumortier (), Matthew Kent and Seth Payton

No 202177, IU SPEA AgEcon Papers from Indiana University, IU School of Public and Environmental Affairs

Abstract: In the United States, the road infrastructure funding is declining due to an increase in fuel efficiency and the non-adjustment of fuel taxes to inflation. Propositions to tax plug-in vehicles have been proposed or implemented in several states. Those propositions are contrary to policies to promote the sale of fuel efficient vehicles. This paper assesses (1) the magnitude of the decline in federal fuel tax revenue caused by plug-in vehicles and (2) quantifies the amount of revenue that could be generated from a federal plug-in vehicle registration fee. We find that the contribution of plug-in vehicles to the decline of the federal fuel tax revenue is at most 1.56% and that the majority of the shortfall can be attributed to the non-adjustment of the fuel tax rate by 2040. An additional tax of $50-$200 per plug-in vehicle per year in the reference case would generate $188-$745 million in 2040 which represents an increase of 1.7% - 6.7% in federal fuel tax revenue compared to no tax. The lesson for policy makers is that plug-in vehicles do not contribute significantly to the funding shortfall in the short- and medium-run and a supplemental tax would generate a small percentage of additional revenue.

Keywords: Environmental Economics and Policy; Resource/Energy Economics and Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 19
Date: 2015-04-21
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene and nep-tre
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/202177/files/I ... 0Papers%202015-4.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Plug-in vehicles and the future of road infrastructure funding in the United States (2016)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:iuspea:202177

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.202177

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IU SPEA AgEcon Papers from Indiana University, IU School of Public and Environmental Affairs Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().