New bill would look into imposing per-mile tax on California drivers

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(The Center Square) – California lawmakers want to study whether a per-mile tax would replace the gas tax so that electric-vehicle drivers would have to pay for using the roadways.

According to Assembly Bill 1421, the new tax, which is also referred to as a road user charge, would be an alternative to the gas tax system.

“We would be good with something that was fair to all cars,” Guy Hall, policy director and strategist for the Sacramento Electric Vehicle Association, told The Center Square on Friday. “We don’t mind a road mileage tax as long as it’s applied to everybody. That would be a concern if it was just applied to EVs.”

While the association supports a tax that requires all drivers to contribute to the maintenance of high-quality roads, Hall wrote to The Center Square in an additional response, the group’s main concern is that incentives to reduce pollution would be removed with the rollout of a simple mile-based charge. Under that system, a high-emission vehicle that heavily pollutes the air would pay the same amount of money as a zero-emission vehicle, Hall wrote.

“Vehicle pollution affects public health significantly,” Hall wrote. “These inequities particularly impact low-income residents who are more likely to live near major roadways.”

According to the California Energy Commission, light-duty zero emission vehicle sales between 2011 and 2025 numbered at 2,551,121, with annual sales just in 2025 alone hitting 408,731. Total light-duty vehicle sales in the state last year exceeded 1.78 million. The California Department of Tax and Fee Administration reported that between 2021 and 2025, the amount of taxable gallons of gas dropped from 13.9 million in fiscal year 2021-22 to 13.3 million gallons in fiscal year 2024-25.

During the same time period, the gas tax went up every year, from 51 cents a gallon in 2021-22 to 59 cents a gallon in 2024-25. As a result, the gas tax revenue collected jumped from roughly $7.1 million in 2021-22 to $7.9 million in 2024-25.

A 2023 report from the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office predicted that notable gas tax revenue decline would occur over the next decade because of the rise in electrical vehicle sales in the state – an estimated $5 billion loss just from the gasoline excise tax.

“They try to use the gas tax as if it’s a user fee in order to fund the highways and the roads,” Wayne Winegarden, senior fellow in business and economics at Pasadena-based Pacific Research Institute, told The Center Square on Friday. “It’s never really functioned well as that, and certainly, with the growth of EVs in California, you’re really creating an issue because they’re getting less revenues to maintain the roads.”

The execution of such a tax would probably prove challenging, Winegarden said.

“I don’t know how you implement it without being extensively intrusive,” Winegarden added. “They’re not talking about making toll roads, they’re talking about tracking how many miles I drive and taxing me accordingly. I just don’t know if that’s practical or not, and certainly, it’s kind of invasive.”

Assemblymember Lori Wilson, D-Suisun City and chair of the Assembly Transportation Committee, who introduced the legislation, was unavailable on Friday for an interview. Other organizations, like the California Transportation Federation and the California Electric Transportation Coalition, declined interviews with The Center Square this week or responded via email that they did not have a stance on the bill.