Careful there; the Taycan is not a sports car, but more like an overweight-but-surprisingly-sporty sedan. (Also available as a wagon.)
It is interesting how you see taxes as a form of punishment. Taxes are the primary revenue for governments. Want government to pay for things, they need money. Yes, those things also include roads and trails for cyclists. If both driving and cycling requires the government to spend money, they should both be taxed accordingly. The inventive should come from one method being cheaper than the other, therefore requiring less government spending, leading to less taxes for that mode of travel. By your logic we should exempt all healthcare workers from all taxes, because we need more healthcare workers. Same for farmers, police, air traffic controllers, etc - everyone that society needs should be tax exempt, right? So the only people paying taxes are those who are not useful to society then?
That has an attractive ring to it
One problem we have is the number of people who get big salaries for non productive work, it adds significantly to cost but not value and is one of the big reasons money lost over 95% of its value during my working lifetime.That would be one tiny and poor government, or one horrible society to live in (full of useless people). ?
If the goal is to shift trips to more efficient modes of transportation like cycling, don't start by increasing the cost and complexity of jumping on a bicycle. So no.
They absolutely should not have to pay road tax. That would be ludicrous. However, they should all be charged a hefty pavement tax, where most seem to prefer riding around our way!
That's what sort of happens though isn't it? In the US i believe agriculture, steel, autos, energy producers etc receive subsidies (aka negative taxes) and benefit from trade tariffs? Not saying it's right or wrong, but Governments (globally) do exactly that - reduce the tax burden (or at least increase the profit margin) on sectors they view as useful. That filters into salary levels etc in those industries that would be higher than otherwise - leading to higher net incomes.
To be honest mate I would bet almost all cyclists also have a car and pay road tax on it, they’ve just chosen to take their bike instead of their car that day
What you're talking about is government spending the tax money. If the government buys a fleet of cars from a car manufacturer, it is not the same as exempting them from taxes. Significantly more than half of all spending in the USA is by governments. Technically, since the US government is spending more than they are taking in via taxes (check out the latest US national debt increase rate), by your logic US has a negative tax rate. The government not only is not giving all the taxes back to the people, they are further borrowing at an astonishing rate lately and giving it to the people!
Not necessarily. Higher incomes aren’t always a given across the board. The industries you mentioned are prone to market fluctuations, exposed to nature’s whims, they’re capital intensive, often operating at near loss, and they employ a lot of blue-collar workers. Yes, they get subsidies — these sectors are often strategic to a country’s stability and self-reliance — but that doesn’t automatically mean bigger paychecks for everyone.
