The credit was a reduction in your own liability, so no one directly paid a penny towards anyone else’s EV credits any more than EV owners funded anyone’s else’s home office deduction or lease deduction or whatver. You either qualify for the deduction or you don’t, and they were non refundable so by definition you funded it yourself.

and if you bitch about the EV credit without acknowledging the massive subsidies that support the fossil fuel industry, you’re a hypocrite.

 

This is the misinformation that keeps being propagated. Thank you for articulating this so eloquently

 

To be clear I have zero issue with the tax credit, I took advantage of it myself I just call it like I see it. We absolutely have been paying people to buy EVs. I think we still should be. We incentivize people to do all sorts of things with the tax code. When we offer tax credits as incentives that tax revenue has to be made up for in other ways, so yeah other taxpayers are subsidizing those credits with their own tax dollars.

 

Those credits weren't given to you by the federal government, they came from Toyota. The EV tax credit is given to EV buyers by the federal government, its a totally different thing. Not saying I have an issue with it, I don't but its not at all the same thing.

I would buy my Pacifica PHEV again without the tax credit, but that doesn't mean the government didn't pay me indirectly to choose it. They did.

 

that view treats tax as a hypothecated zero sum game, where a dollar lost here is specifically made up elsewhere and it doesn’t work like that. The reality is that your or my tax bill wouldn’t have changed whether the EV tax credit existed or not, so one did not weigh on the other. Arguably it should have, but it doesn’t. Lawmakers are nowhere near that sophisticated.

 

Oh, and by the way, Steve, in case it wasn’t clear the hypocrite observation wasn’t speaking about you 😉

 

I don’t disagree, but I was responding to the statement that nobody paid anybody to buy those EVs and that’s not really an accurate statement because people absolutely have bought EVs because of the tax credit. If that weren’t true carmakers (including Tesla) wouldn’t be projecting reduced sales because of it going away.

Oh I know!

 

looking forward to the donut and fast food massive new taxes to reduce healthcare costs. oh wait...

 

If people just passed on donuts and fast food, health care costs are automatically reduced. But it's like asking people to stop depending on foreign oil and gas...

 

People should be able to eat and drive whatever they want, that’s just part of living in a society.

I’m all for finding ways of incentivizing people to make healthier choices.

 

Sure you can. That's why diabetes, heart disease and obesity are epidemic here. Enjoy that donut

 

Those are choices people should be free to make. You can eat donuts and still be healthy. Luckily we have great medical interventions now that can put an end to obesity easily.

Believing in freedom means believing in people’s rights to make decisions for themselves you think are wrong. If somebody wants to eat themselves to death or drive a big inefficient gas car, that’s their right.

 

Enjoy that extra donut on me. Let's get back to EV'S 👍

 

I will, and I’m 6’ tall with a 34 inch waist so I’m fine lol. I didn’t bring this topic up.

 

Then it's settled. Now on to EV'S