For example, In my wonderfully sunny (sarcasm) country of England, Fuel duty makes up roughly 70 percent of the total cost of volume (litre/gallon). Would the reduction in taxation create a boom for small-medium sized businesses as they would have reduced costs, eg more money for production etc. What do you think?
It doesn't matter how high or low the taxes are. There will always be people out there that complain and moan about them and then expect all the roads to be in good repair despite budgetary needs.
Here in the US we have massive taxation, but the infrastructure is crumbling. The problem isn't revenue gathering, it is a total lack of competence and accountability with our state and federal governments.
Budgetary line items appear in the budget document, accompanied by the governor's message, presented to the legislature for approval. In fact, in some states the allocations function more as guidelines rather than hard and fast line amounts. When state monies are aggregated, appearing as current operating expenses and capital expenditures, it is relatively easy to move dollars around. "Dedicated" lottery, road and transportation funds, may be in name only. To be sure, the budget accounting processes are more complicated than what I've written here, but you get the idea.
Nothing the government handles is going to be done very well. We spend a ton of money on schools, on roads and yet they are mediocre or worse. The government just isn't very efficient and allocating resources, in this case tax dollars. I've spent time up north and they have a ton of taxes and toll roads and yet the roads are horrible. You see it in New York City, one of the most heavily taxed places in America. The answer to this of course is to let the private sector handle our infrastructure, as they would do a much better job.
I don't see the connection, then again I don't live in England. If you are referring to the gas stations, they take their cut anyway regardless of tax. And most of them are owned by big corporations anyway. If you are talking about other types of businesses, then (excluding some obvious business sectors) fuel costs are a very small part of the expense, and at least in here a lot of the transportation related costs can be deducted in your taxation.
Once again, it all depends on where you live. I know that in my country a fraction of the money collected through fuel tax, vehicle tax, speeding tickets etc goes towards maintaining roads and the large majority of the money disappears into the rest of government expenditures. I don't know if there are any countries where the money generated from these taxes would go directly to road maintenance.
