Bob, it's questionable to differentiate b etween commerical and non-commmercial activities to tax, but people seem to think it's a good idea. <Basically the concept would be to tax non commercial transportation hydrocarbon fuels.>
That idea has been done. and in the early 1980s the New Zealand government was thinking of doing a similar thing = taxing road fuel but not off-highway. I wrote to them opposing the idea [on behalf of BP Oil NZ] because it would be an administrative mess and would introduce various problems and tax evading activities.
The New Zealand government plan would have involved putting dye in untaxed fuel, so if dye was found in a private car, then the person could be arrested, fined and punished. Bulldozers and off-highway vehicles wouldn't need to have the dye in them.
I would not wish to be in charge of delivery logistics. Another whole fuel stream would need to be created. That is a large project involving storage tanks, pipelines, trucks, duplicated delivery routes, and huge amount of paperwork to achieve nothing and to make things worse.
It would be easier to just give off-highway businesses a paper tranaction tax credit which would keep more spiv s in government offices busy and would leave people who are actually trying to run the world to get on unimpeded by the bludgers and kleptocrats.
It would be bad enough differentiating between off-highway and roading [not all off-highway people have their own fuel storage = they buy at public service stations], but imagine the chaos as people driving private cars pull up to buy the cheaper dyed fuel, taking their chances that they would not be stopped on the journey.
The fuel inpector would have to prove that it was not a commercial trip.
It would be a lot easier and sensible to just tax carbon at the borders.
Better still would be to cut kleptocratic wastrelism and the need for taxation. Cancel 95% of government activity. Life would be better [other than for bludgers and spivs]. Taxes could be cut to nearly nothing. Fines, user charges, selling of citizenships, donations, inheritance, would be enough to cover the minimal financial requirements.
Fortunately, the government didn't go ahead with their idea. But they went ahead with other annoying and counterproductive things such as taking over fuel specifications. What I used to do part time, they now have a fleet of people to do, they conduct jamborees and then do a bad job of it and stifle innovation. For example, when they brought in unleaded petrol, they wrecked a whole lot of cars.
Mqurice |
