[Hien Nguyen Thi Thu]

In order to solve traffic problems, governments should tax private car owners heavily and use the money to improve public transportation. What are the advantages and disadvantages of such a solution?

It is widely argued that government should raise tax on personal vehicles to curtail its usage and allocate the money to enhance the public transportation quality. While there exist several tangible benefits from the policy, I believe that they are outweighed by the significant drawbacks.
Advocates of charging more tax may argue that the increasing number of private cars is one of the main contributing factors to congestion. High tax payment may discourage car owners from using them and these people use public transportation as suitable alternatives. Consequently, the amount of exhaust fumes released from traffic, which exacerbates the air quality and even causes air pollution, reduces remarkably. However, these advantages may be eclipsed by disadvantages because traffic problems do not stem from a recent surge in private vehicle ownership. Poor public infrastructure is another culprit of traffic jams, which cannot be immediately solved by tax increase.
I am of the opinion that such policy can create greater financial burden for the masses. First and foremost, people are unlikely to switch from personal vehicles to other modes of transport. In fact, car owners have to pay a lot bills beside tax payment so even when the tax goes up, they would not forego the convenience in private cars. Exorbitant car prices affect average-income and low-income earners more severely. Additionally, this tendency may also impact on car companies’ profits which partly contribute to the whole country economic development. For example, many countries such as Thailand, Indonesia decide to encourage car industry and then charge these companies a certain amount of tax which is invested in building roads to deal with congestion.
In conclusion, albeit some obvious benefits, increases in taxation would be counterproductive and may indirectly affect people’s lives as well as national economy.

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task 2: In order to solve traffic problems, governments should tax private car owners heavily and use the money to improve public transportation. What are the advantages and disadvantages of such a solution?

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