I’d say yes, it is a bad idea. It seems like it would be inefficient to set up the new tax and supporting bureaucracy/infrastructure and invasive in practice. And as others have said, a gas tax already is roughly based on milage and the weight of the vehicle, while being completely anonymous.
Poor people are net recipients in the tax system.
So? Translate that to actual life style facts. Many poor struggle just to pay their bills and put food on the table, despite being a “net recipient”. You want to make it harder on them?
These are people and this tax would fray one of their essential life lines. Now if you talked about replacing that life line with something else like Chronos suggested then maybe we could find some common ground.
Poorer people not only tend to drive older cars – and I see many, many cars closer to 20 or 30 years old than to ten years old – but they tend not to maintain them in the same condition as they were when they were new. A poorly-maintained car gets fewer miles per gallon than a well-maintained one. And worn-out cars, even if reasonably-well maintained, get poorer mileage than a ‘fresh’ one. For example, my dad had an '85 Chevrolet Sprint that I personally got 60 mpg in. After >100,000 on a 1.0l three-banger it got in the low-to-mid-40s. So how many miles per gallon is this average 28 mpg ten-year-old car with 200,000 miles on it, worn-out everything, smelling like a diesel boat, and with sheet-metal damage just so we don’t forget aerodynamics getting now?
That’s simply inaccurate today. Modern cars tune themselves many times a second. We stopped e-check in my state because it was a waste of money and created a situation were people were making an unnecessary trip (more pollution) to verify the obvious. The vast, vast, vast majority of cars on the road today are as tuned as they will ever get.
I was talking about how poor people tend to drive older cars. How many of them drive self-tuning cars?
Also, I’ve never seen a computer, even on the newest cars, that will do a ring job, renew bearings, seal cracked manifolds, and so forth.
More people in public employee unions to support Democrats with money and patronage.
I still can’t see the upside. The only justification seems to be “we need more tax revenue! gas taxes aren’t cutting it” - so raise the gas tax if you have to. Gas taxes are already one of the more elegant taxes, as they get paid generally by people who use them more.
The news article I read said that the GPS data collected would by anonymous (the unit would only report the total travelled) but from there, once everyone has a mandatory GPS receiver in their car and has to hook up every week or two to report their travel, it’s not very far at all from the government collecting information about where everyone has been during that time.
I see lots of cons and almost no pros - I guess the only thing would be the ability to implement congestion taxes, and I’m not sure that’s a good idea.
Most cars don’t way anywhere NEAR 4000 lbs. Not even half that.
I understand your point but its 2009. a 20 year old car is a 1989 car with a computer. You’re examples of major repairs do not represent a significant number. Of course there’s someone out there driving a 1974 Maverick but you’ll die of hunger waiting to see it drive by. And even if you see it, it doesn’t change any arguments beyond it sucks to be poor and over-taxed.
Because they don’t have access to that info now? 100% surveillance is coming, barring some sort of collapse, it’s certain.
Um, the average car probably isn’t 4,000 pounds, but it sure is more than 2,000 pounds. It depends on whether you include trucks, SUVs and minivans, but most sedans sold in the US now are between about 2,500 and 3,500 pounds. You’d be really hard-pressed to find anything under 2,000 pounds. Even a Mini Cooper or a current-generation Mazda Miata weighs more than that.
And is my motorcycle taxed at the same rate as an Escalade? What about a 50cc scooter? What about when I’m using a truck to tow a boat?
I can’t think of anything positive for society by this proposal.
Like a bunch of people have already said, a VMT is like a gas tax, only with a subsidy to fuel-inefficient vehicles relative to fuel-efficient ones. So a VMT is a gasoline tax’s dumb cousin.
And that’s not even dealing with the much greater logistical complexities of instituting a VMT.
If the point of a gas or mileage tax is to raise money to maintain roads, then let’s put the tax on heavier vehicles where it belongs. I heard somewhere that structural damage is estimated as being proportional to the 4th power of the axle weight. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but we all know that compared to that fully-loaded 18-wheeler, even a Hummer barely causes any wear and tear on the roads. Since there’s only so much one can do to increase the gas mileage of a heavy truck, a gas tax will put the tax burden where it belongs. (And hopefully push more freight shipping onto the low-friction rails, and get us to do something about creating a better freight rail system in this country.)
To the extent that reduced use of gas under the existing tax regime due to higher gas prices could cause a reduced fund for road maintenance, ISTM that the solution is to make a gas tax like a standard sales tax - a fixed percentage of the dollar amount purchased, not a fixed number of cents per gallon. Right now, the Federal gas tax of 18.4¢/gallon is about 10% of the cost I’m paying at the pump. Fine with me - just build that in so it’s always the last 10% of the price, so that when the price at the pump is $2/gal., the Federal tax is 20¢, and when the price at the pump is $4/gal., the Federal tax is 40¢.
Problem solved, without any complicated new achitecture. 
Yeah, this is just what we need right now. A hugely expensive program that will create tons of red tape and not change a thing.
I already pay additional tax because I drive a bit more than most folks. I also pay more tax because I drive an SUV.
People that drive more buy more fuel and pay more tax.
Heavier vehicles use more fuel and pay more tax.
A mileage tax is an awful idea just due to the bureaucracy that would be needed for collection & enforcement. Raising gasoline taxes costs almost nothing in terms of bureaucracy since it’s just changing a percentage value in a calculation already being performed.
Moreover, gas taxes are just about the fairest taxes around. To a large degree, the amount of gasoline you use correlates with the amount of wear and tear you subject the public road infrastructure to. If you’re using more gas, you’re driving further, or driving a heavier vehicle, or some combination of the two. As for its regressive nature? Well, first I think that’s overstated - there are generally ways, not necessarily easy, to minimize gas usage when you’re poor. Second, if you want to un-regressive-ize it, you can throw in some sort of tax rebate thing somewhere (though at a cost of added bureaucracy). Finally, if you seriously want to modify people’s behaviour such that they use less gas, you’ve got to make using gas more costly. There’s no other way to do it. Bad public transit, bike-unfriendliness, etc, these are all results of inexpensive gasoline. Continued cheap gas in the name of saving poor folks from having to use bad public transit systems just ensures that the public transit systems will remain bad.
They don’t have nearly the surveillance needed to track your whereabouts 24/7 aynwhere, and not even remotely close in most places.
I also find “they’re already violating our privacy, so we might as well let them do so more efficiently and effectively” to be an unappealing argument.
Maybe I don’t have enough caffeine in me yet this morning. What is the proposal?
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They’ll start a new tax, over and above the portion already paid with each gallon of gas?
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They won’t charge it at the pump; they’ll review how many miles were driven and tax it annually.
A) That would seem mathematically retarded to me. If I drive X miles, I buy N gallons, and part of what I pay is actually tax. If I drive 2X miles, I buy 2N gallons. I’d pay double the taxes already.
B) Unless the tax wouldn’t be linear?
The concept: progressive taxes. Those who can pay, do. The millionaire pays more to support the country (state, municipality, etc.) via taxes than someone struggling on minimum wage.
My ex was an economist and she said sales tax is regressive. The poorest guy pays the same sales tax rate on purchases as the rich guy, but it hurts the poorest guy a lot more. A gallon of gas falls under that scenario.
So if they accounted for it, maybe poor John Doe would pay 1%; rich James Public pays 10%. Is that what it’s about? In principle that would make some sense. But yeah, the govt would find a way to fuck it up…they’d put a team on it 24/7.
[tangent]Don’t know if it’s true (someone fight my ignorance if need be), but I’ve heard that in Germany, they apply that progressive concept to traffic tickets. They write a ticket for speeding but the amount isn’t decided when it’s written. They find out how much the offender earns to determine that and mail the bill.
[/tangent]
4000 seemed high to me, too, but I seem to have been mistaken. As a point of reference: Wikipedia says that the current Miata is 2410 lbs, and a Mini seems to come in around 2500 as well. It’s hard to find a cite for average curb weight, but this New York Times article tells me that as of 2004 the average weight of cars and light trucks was 4021 lbs.