Quote:

Commission Urges Taxing Drivers More

Read more at WSJ.com


A gas tax rewards efficiency.
A mileage tax reverses that efficiency. It will charge a Hummer owner the same tax cost per mile as a Prius owner will pay.
Now, I doubt too many Prius owners will trade in their gas sipper for a guzzler, but beware of the law of unintended consequences.
In addition, the infrastructure is already in place to levy a fuel tax. It doesn't require any investment to maintain. Imagine how much a "mileage meter" will cost for every car in the country? In addition, I'm sure there will be a lot of fraud and 'hacking' as some will figure out how to tinker with their meter.
I think this is a foolish idea and bad policy.

 

Gotta agree with you 100%! When I first heard (on CNN) and read (AP) about this, it struck me as ridiculous. Not only for the reasons you mentioned (non-incentive for more fuel efficient cars/trucks/SUVs, cost of implementing this "program"), but also the high cost to civil liberties.

I had written up a two-paragraph "tirade" on this idea, but all I will say is that the government cannot be trusted not to use such a "tracking" device to do exactly what its name suggests, track us! Look up what USA PATRIOT Act actually stands for (yes, it's an acronym!), and you'll have flashbacks to your high school days and reading Orwell's 1984. I leave you with a quotation from one of my favorite movies, Enemy of the State, "Well who's gonna monitor the monitors of the monitors?"

 

Ok, the sheer cost of this program would be staggering, even in the age of 1 Trillion dollar bailouts and such.

Let's say there are roughly 251 million passenger vehicles registered in the US (I got this figure from Wikipedia, I'll add the link at the end). EZ-Pass in Pennsylvania charges a $25 deposit plus a $3 non-refundable annual fee. That's 7.028 billion dollars right there, and that's assuming the transponder only costs $28 to produce. For the government to implement their "tracking" program nationwide, they would have to have transponders permanently placed in new vehicles, and professionally installed on existing vehicles. Not only would they have to be installed, but they would have to be installed in a tamper-proof way (somehow permanently affixing it to the roof or other area of the vehicle).

Let's assume the labor rate is $20/hour and it takes an hour to install this transponder. That ups the cost to about 12.1 billion dollars. Of course, I'd say these are low-ball estimates and doesn't include other necessities of this system of which I can't even imagine the costs (i.e. more satellites). But, I would think that 12.1 billion could be more wisely spent researching more efficient vehicles rather than spending money so we can be taxed more!

The Wikipedia article on passenger vehicles (yes, I know Wiki isn't always reliable, but I read other places that there are fewer than 70 million passenger vehicles in the US, and that just doesn't make sense when the average household has at least 2 vehicles).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passeng..._United_States

 

The real kick would be enabling states to put Tolls on roads that aren't currently tolled. It's one thing to pay a toll on a new road that shortens your commute. It's another to create a toll. Just imagine the politics behind those decisions.

The other ideas are just tax, tax and tax. Yet another tax on the poor.

BOHICA

 

Sorry, but the time to complain is in November....

 

Funny this is, we were already being taxed, we asked for change, and now we're being taxed again, and when we ask for change again in 2010, we'll just get new creative taxes!

Whether Democrat or Republican, fiscally liberal or conservative, in the end, the government is there to tax us. They're going to find their ways, whether it's by state sales taxes, the estate tax, payroll/income tax, gas taxes, or some new and inventive way to get into our pockets. Yes, we need to pay for services that everyone wants/needs, but come on, can't you at least be up front about it? Oh wait, you're politicians, never mind.

 

To put it mildly, the idea of tracking miles driven by each owner of the car is stupid. First how are they going to do it? Put $200-$300 temper proof device in each car (does such a thing exist?), or rely on existing odometers that can be easily reset, especially in older cars? I used to have Nisan few years back and odometer stopped working reliably around 70k. Some weeks it would work perfectly and some it wouldn't, for example 2500 mile trip to Fla and back registered as 150 mile trip. I could see whole underground industry dedicated to altering and defeating monitoring devices, whatever they are, not to mention feeling like criminal with tracking bracelet, every time you go for a ride. I don't think this would have much chance of passing, especially with our current government concentrating more on cutting pollution and lowering oil dependence. On the other hand increasing tax on fuel already in place not only is cheap and easy to implement, but also would give incentive to all drivers to be more efficient. As a matter of fact, fuel tax could be used to stabilize gas prices, by increasing it when oil is cheap and decreasing it when price is out of hand, which would stabilize economy and make life easier on American car makers, since it seems they're always in opposite cycle, making inefficient cars when oil is high and by the time they switch production lines to more efficient cars, oil is cheap again. For example what will happen to GM Volt and all other hybrids coming to the market now, when oil is at $35-$40 a barrel?
But here is a deal, I think we should find which moron congressman is sponsoring this bill and vote him out of the office, before he does more damage going forward, I think this is how our system should work???
And yes, government tracking how many miles I drive does put chill down my spine. Even electric cars are not a problem either since electricity is taxed as well, so charging the car would make a person pay extra tax on electric bill and really our highways are benefiting every single person, even if they don't drive, how otherwise would they got food and goods delivery to their stores and homes.

 

I forgot about this: A tax on mileage would affect any business that uses trucks for shipping their products, that includes Wal-Mart, Target, grocery stores, UPS and Fed Ex. I'd imagine this would eat into corporate profits, meaning consumer goods would certainly be more expensive and even buying products online would be more expensive!

And, if the government wants to somehow circumvent their tax on vehicles for commercial vehicles, well, this is just indicative of how convoluted and complicated our tax laws are!

 

So, I guess it's safe to assume that an increase in tax hurts business and consumers alike...
Hmmm....
What an interesting concept!

 

I saw an article on this a week or so again on MSNBC and it explained that the current suggestion was to use a "black box" attached to the car (which most cars have to record crash data) and link that "black box" to GPS services. The taxable rate would then be calculated off how far you drive and where you drive. There was talk about different rates depending on if you drove on highways or side streets (Note: if it is cheaper for people to drive on side streets, those currently quiet neighborhoods wont be so quite any more.). There was also talk about how to deal with different types of vehicles and how to "reward" those who buy efficient vehicles. The solution was to use the weight of the vehicle in the mileage charge calculation. Finally, it was mentioned that download of this data would (or could) initially take place at gas stations as people filled up.

Personally, I think this idea is nuts. It will allow for the Government to track each of us (which has been a long term plan). It will allow for States to issue speeding ticket without the need for a police officer to catch (by use of GPS). It will also aid the development of other (already in the works) plans to tax minutes of watched TV and minutes of Internet use. Where does it stop? Tax each breath we take? Finally, what about the fact that no technology is perfect and that GPS is far from perfect when using sat based GPS only. They would probably have to invest in some kind of "interior GPS" to allow accurate GPS readings in covered and busy areas (there are already patents out on this idea).

One final point, we have to remember that the people making these laws and suggestions often live in major metropolitan areas where there is public transportation. Those people in major cities who do not drive due to public transportation availability would not pay tax (just as they don't on fuel right now). This means, it would again "hurt" those who live in rural areas because they could not afford to live near the city or because of other reasons. It "hurts" those who's jobs disappeared and had to take a job with a 50 mile commute and could not pick up and move their family or sell their house. It most of all hurts the middle to lower class.

Go change!