Hey Glort
re this:
Your "In NZ you pay road tax by mileage. Don't matter what fuel you are using, you pay to be on the road. They may choose to do it a variety of ways and I'm sure they will do whatever they thing extracts max $$.
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Actually no. Here in our Paradise at the bottom of the world you pay Road User Charges ("RUCs") on diesel (and only on diesel) by the kilometre travelled; and the $$ rate per kilometre depends on the size of your vehicle - big trucks pay lots, small cars don't pay much
It is done this way because there's a great deal of diesel used in agriculture & industry (tractors, harvesters, logging gear etc) by machines which don't go on-road and so make no contribution to wear-and-tear on the roads, and so pay no RUCs. Vehicles that do go on the road, and which do contribute to wear-and-tear, pay by the kilometre and have to buy their RUCs either on an automatic system or in advance
Other fuels (petrol, LPG etc) have a road tax component included in the price-per-litre or whatever. The thinking is that petrol is used in "light-ish" vehicles which make a modest contribution to roading wear-and-tear etc (cars, utes, SUVs etc) so it's fair to tax them per litre. The bigger your car, the more gas you use (loosely) and the more tax you pay
What this overlooks of course, is that the government - as governments are wont to do - takes, say, $0.40 per litre in tax, uses maybe $0.20 of that on roading and diverts the rest into the general "consolidated fund"