11/23/2024

Costly Subsidies For the Rich: Quantifying the Subsidies Offered to Battery Electric Powered Cars

There are also distributional impacts from these EV subsidies. IRS Statistics of Income data illustrate that, for the 2014 tax year, 78.7 percent ($207.1 million) of the federal consumer tax credits were received by
households with an adjusted gross income (AGI) of $100,000 or above. A further 20.5 percent of the tax credits ($54.1 million) were received by households with an AGI between $50,000 and $100,000. Therefore, over 99 percent of the total tax credits went to households with an AGI above $50,000. Further, the tax
credit data indicate that the manufacturing subsidies, which also benefit the consumers of EVs, primarily benefit households who are in the top-half of income-earners.

These data reveal that not only is the size of the EV subsidies substantial, they favor certain competitors over others, and primarily benefit upper income households.

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