gas prices (kinda OT)

OMG, how can they survive without air conditioning, and a Starbucks Frapucchino after practice?

It doesn't seem then that you have a flat rate "road tax" as they do here (next to all the other sundry taxes, such as property, sales, income, etc....) By this I mean, you pay road tax for every vehicle you own, every month, regardless of whether you actually drive it. You can keep your beautiful convertible garaged for nine months a year and only drive it three, but you still pay twelve months of road tax.

The only way to avoid paying the tax for a car that you never drive, is to hand back your registration. But then you won't be able to drive it that one time a year when the weather is fine.

This is, of course, preposterous, but it helps keep the number of cars down -- I, for one, do not keep a second vehicle (say a beautiful 1988 Saab 900 for recreational driving on weekends), exactly because of the flat rate road tax.

Maybe if "soccer" introduced chearleaders?

Well, not exactly. We don't pay a road tax, specifically -- with the exception of the sales tax of 8 cents on the dollar of fuel purchases. All of the other road funding comes from the state general fund and from federal income tax dollars that manage to drift back down the funding pipeline. It doesn't matter that one owns 1 car or 5, he pays the same in taxes. The obvious exception would be that the guy that owns 5 cars has a higher income - arguably - and therefore pays more income tax. But assuming equal income, everybody pays the same tax except that high mileage drivers will buy more gas and therefore the sales tax they pay will be a greater dollar amount. If a car gets filled with gas, then is parked for 9 months or gets used everyday, it pays the same in taxes for that particular fill up.

In any event, we pay considerably less fuel tax than Europeans pay, this is why we have Suburbans and Hummers trolling the highways, and you guys find a way to make due with Geo Metros and other micro minis that Americans do not seem to tolerate very well. The argument has long been that if we paid the same fuel taxes that you pay, we would change the way we drive.

I drive a 3 Series as a daily driver, my wife gets by nicely with a Mazda minivan, my daughter has a Toyota truck, and we keep a Jeep in the side yard for weekend driving. As you can see, I keep several cars around and don't worry much about paying road taxes.

Hey, that's an idea!

Trouble is, they may introduce advertising and cheer-leading breaks every 10 minutes...

DAS

For direct contact replace nospam with schmetterling

In western Europe at least we all pay a tax that allows us to put the car on the road. The annual sum and way of calculating it varies substantially across the countries. In Britain we display a tax disc on the windscreen as evidence that we have paid.

In Britain this tax and those on fuel were raised initially to pay for roads, but the link was broken decades ago and, of course, revenues far exceed the expensiture on roads.

Peter Bozz's comment about paying for a car off the road for a long period do not necessarily apply across the board as in the UK we can deregister a car if it is kept on private ground. And did I not hear about seasonal registration in Germany?

DAS

For direct contact replace nospam with schmetterling

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in Poland we all hae it in fuel price. normally 1 Liter of fuel in production costs about 15Ecents, on gas station- 1 Euro. So 85 Ecents are taxes

it's not possible in poland:( actually you do not pay road tax but you have to pay car insurance no matter if you use your car or not. only old cars (more then 40 years) can have insurance not for whole year but just for part of it for exemple 1 month. I've also VW T2 westfalia camper (30 years old) which I use only for holidays but I have to pay insurance for whole year:(((

Anax

In the Netherlands, you *can* deregister a car if you don't keep it on the public road. But then you literally have to hand in your license plates -- Taxman is pretty tough that way. (We don't have tax discs or other visual markings indicating we've actually paid the due taxes.) So it's kind of a hassle. I haven't heard of seasonal registration here. Only cars older than 25 years are exempt from the road tax. So you can keep a 1979 convertible (or older) for "free".

Logic dictates that, yes, you will. Chances are you'd be less likely to buy a Suburban than a Japanese minivan. That will keep the gasoline demand down a bit. But hey, it's your money. If you want to keep giving bundles of it to the Middle East, Venezuela and other place that the average American (and European) can't even find on the map, that's your prerogative. I hear the Burj Al Arab Hotel is a very expensive piece of architecture.

If you kept these cars in Holland, they would set you back at least $300+ a month (rough guestimation: the road tax on a diesel powered Land Cruiser alone is about $150 a month).

And that's before you even drove a single mile with any of them.

Subsuming the current road tax ("vehicle excise duty" in its present guise) into the fuel duties keeps getting raised as a discussion point in the UK. There are people who advocate this.

We pay more than EUR 1 per litre excluding the road tax.

However, wages in Poland are lower, so the price there is probably higher, pro rata, i.e. the effect on the pocket is greater.

DAS

For direct contact replace nospam with schmetterling

Geez, I hope you guys don't churn this into yet another reason to hate Americans.

There aren't all that many, really, though I live half an hour from the city, so most of the people around that drive trucks do so because they need them for their buisinesses, etc. The distance from common destinations is such that fuel economy is more important. I drive 30k+ miles per year, so fuel costs are a significant part of my budget. My miles are split between a Dodge 3500 Van and my 318is. Here in upstate NY gas is about $2.25/gal.

"Peter Bozz" wrote

Is being rated 8-10 in the world sucking? Not the last I heard. And, if the US sucks, why did the U20 team beat Argentina and Egypt and tie Deutschland before losing to Italy? And why is the US's Women's team rated 1st?

Floyd

I assume U20 is "under twenty"? If they are indeed kicking ass, then the soccer moms have served their purpose: a new generation of top notch soccer players is emerging from the US.

Anyway, just I checked the Fifa World Football (yes, that's "soccer") Rankings: teh U Ess of A is ranked 10th! I might have to retract that "sucks" statement. Sorry... Old prejudices die the hardest.

By "this" do you mean the fact that you pay a lot less taxes on cars and fuel in the States? If so, then I believe the appropriate term here would be "jealousy"....

"Peter Bozz" wrote

Yeah, the US (men - the women have been on top for most of the history of international women's soccer ;-> ) have inched up over the last 5 years. They're not quite ready to bid for a WC, however, let alone win one.

Floyd (soccer dad)

A reasonable man would be jealous, a zealot would have fire in his eyes. Yet another reason to hate Americans. ;-)

And I thought the right word would be "envy".... :-)

DAS

It's just that "envy" implies that I want to be like 'em. Which I don't really (no offense meant; I just like being European).