Re:Weight-based motor vehicle tax
by rolldat777 on Wednesday August 30, 2023 @05:29PM
(#37329388)
It's not just inconvenient, it's inconvenient enough to almost say you can't do it. I believe there is a firm lockout period of 2 years (so no 'new' cars can be imported). And then if it is not already licensed with various agencies you have to do that yourself, per-car, at a cost of (I heard) $7-15k. Not to mention the shipping, customs, etc.
As a fan of light compact trucks, the kind they don't sell here in the U.S. anymore, my understanding is that a badly-written function in the CAFE standard calculations is one of the primary reasons I can't buy a truck that's smaller than my bedroom. The function calculates acceptable mileage based on vehicle footprint, and was nominally intended to encourage better fuel efficiency, but had the perverse effect of making trucks larger. Even then, it's legal to sell smaller trucks, but manufacturers have to pay a fine that apparently ruins the profit margin for them. And then there's the infamous chicken tax, and so on.