[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by JSH

I say it sounds better than it is because it is still a tax credit. The more you make the more you get until the cutoff.

If someone can front the money for a year, they didn't need the "help" to purchase the EV in the first place. It's the wealthy that take advantage of these schemes.

Subsidizing the purchase of used EVs helps low and moderate income people buy a used EV. That is the point of the credit.

It doesn't, because as I pointed out, if you can front the money, you didn't need the help. That, and see below.

It doesn't drive up the sale price because the salesman doesn't know how much the buyer makes - at least they shouldn't until they are well into the buying process after the sale price has already been negotiated.

The car dealers factor in the credits into the price, either through conscious decision, or just responding to apparent increases in demand. Not only that, but people will typically inquire about the tax credits in talking to the dealers, so the salesman use that as further leverage to keep the prices high.

You can still find cheap used EVs in Oregon despite our $2500 tax rebate for low and moderately income people. (Which has quite a bit higher cut-off than the proposed federal credit)

Most of the used EVs in Oregon are coming from CA, because they can sell for a higher price here, because we offer $2,500 for moderate income families. Rather than a CA vehicle selling locally there, they get trucked up to lots in Oregon to fetch a higher sales price due to our manipulation of pricing. Perhaps the prices aren't a straight $2,500 higher than in CA, but my sense based on shopping is that our EVs are probably priced $1,500 higher than other places. A person that qualifies for the credit will end up owning an EV for slightly less than places without subsidy, after waiting a year to file taxes, but for everyone else, they pay more.

... and none of the changes address the fact that we're paying enormous subsidies to foreign manufacturers for no reason, or that it's a regressive program that tends to benefit only the wealthy, or that it's none of Big Government's business to choose technology winners or losers, or that limiting the credit to a certain number per manufacturer creates perverse incentives to both increase and decrease EV development, and that it results in an unfair playing field when companies like Tesla only sell EVs and run out of credits quickly, meanwhile other foreign companies can continue leaning on their ICE sales after exhausting their credits... and those are just the few catastrophic problems I could think of in 1 minute of lazy thought. There's certainly more, but any single one of those is sufficiently bad enough dismiss the whole thing as a dumb idea.

I'm annoyed that we're moved by feeling and not reason. That said, I'm also excited that I'll likely profit from taxpayers lack of reasoning ability. Mixed emotions, but I'd gladly profit less in exchange for people who reason more. I guess I win either way.