Road users are levied a myriad of taxes and charges. Taxes are levied at all stages from owning a vehicle to operating, maintaining, parking, selling, etc. Some of these are intended to raise general revenue while others are related to the use of infrastructure and correcting externalities. Although the revenues collected from road users far exceeds the government investment in the transport sector, the design of charges lacks obvious rationalism and transparency. It is premised in this paper that for the sake of equity, efficiency and transparency, taxes and charges in the transport sector should be designed on a rational basis so as to meet the objectives and goals of an overall transport policy. Road users should be charged for the amount of their contribution to the externalities - congestion, noise, environmental damage, accident risk, etc. The amount of taxes charged should, ideally, be able to meet the cost of amelioration of specific transportation problems. A system where transport objectives and externalities are related to appropriate charging mechanism is developed. The taxes and charges in road transport are catalogued and anomalies in the tax system are examined. The paper covers a major element of a taxation policy in transportation - rational design of different tax regimes and optimal use of the revenues in meeting the overall objectives of the transport policy. (A)
Samenvatting