Mileage tax replacing fuel tax

In My Humble Opinion
21

Well, except for the fact that a mileage tax requires the purchase and installation of millions of GPS transponders in cars and the purchase/installation of tens of thousands of receiver units at gasoline pumps. Do you have any idea how expensive that would be, retrofitting something like that securely in a car? That is a titanic waste of money for something that is, at best, a revenue neutral way to change how you tax for roads.

Losing money because people are buying efficient cars? Gee, I can’t think of a single solitary way you could increase the tax on gas to make up for the shortfall. Raising the gas tax a couple of cents/gal obviously won’t work,:rolleyes:, so let’s spend a few hundred million dollars outfitting every car and gas station in the state with complicated electronics.

I can appreciate how one might think a mileage tax is more fair, or a more appropriate way to tax vehicles, I may not agree, but that’s fine. I cannot fathom how people can actually think this outrageously expensive, complex, and intrusive method of application is a good idea.

Back to the fanciful ways to defeat the system… How about detaching your transponder, setting up a quick connect, and only putting it back in when you go fill up the car?

22

Does the proposed mileage tax charge everybody the same tax per mile, no matter what they drive? Or do the rates vary according to vehicle size and weight? In that case it might be about as fair, for most drivers, as the gas tax is now. Though it’d still suck for hybrid drivers, of course, unless they get a credit for that.

23

It seems to me the biggest winners here will be the trucking industry, whose tax bill will really plummet. And since they have given more political contributions than I possibly can, I see this happening. I would expect it will be on a state-by-state basis, but it will sweep the country fairly quickly.

However, my crystal ball has been wrong before. When I have some more time, let me tell you about Jimmy Carter’s second term.

24

I agree that it will be a disincentive to pursue fuel efficiency. In addition to the gas-guzzling, expensive SUVs that only the well-off can afford being favored by this proposition, those in congested urban areas are also given a break, since each mile is less efficient due to traffic. This will cause a further disincentive to pursue work in a less congested area or find less congeted alternative transportation options, further wasting fuel in traffic jams.

This is a very complex approach, but equality could be achieved with a 3-tiered approach:
#1) Fuel tax. This is probably the fairest tax to help maintain roads that are in a poor state of repair, since heavier, more gas consuming vehicles, will cause roads to deteriorate heavier.
#2) Mileage tax. This will help pay for non-wear and tear related maintenance on all roads (and to build/expand new roads in areas that #3 would be inefficient for). After all, someone has to clean and plow the roads, no matter if an SUV or a Civic is going through it.
#3) London-esque “entry tax” for congested areas such as LA (and maybe San Fran?) Each car entering a certain area will have to pay a toll (electronically assessed by the same device that measures mileage). This will target certain areas and will go toward repairing and maintaining roads in those specific congested areas.

I think this approach would be utterly fair (if they are all targeted correctly.) It would, however, be expensive to implement and administer.

25

While I’m still not sold on the regressive nature of the proposed tax, I don’t like it for the reasons Tastes of Chocolate stated, and Cheesesteak’s comments reinforce my doubts that this would somehow better fund road maintenance.

BTW, this made the news today as a proposal in California.

26

While I have no desire to have a transponder placed on my vehicle for reasons of money and privacy, I do like the idea of a mileage tax. It is a fair tax in that the people who use the roads are the people who pay for the roads and the more they used it the more they would pay.
in order for me to support it however it would need two features:

  1. It would need to be based on the weight of the vehicle and the number of wheels it has. Weight and wheels have a direct relationship to road wear. In other words that little 70cc moped is not going to do near the damage to the road that a 3000 pound SUV can do, which in turn is not going to do near the damage that a 80,000 pound 18 wheeler can do.
  2. It would be collected yearly when paying for tags. Virtually every state has a annual inspection required to renew regristration and at that time the mileage is written down. This mileage along with weight/wheels of the vehicle which is also already on file can be used to compute the mileage. This should make the net cost of switching to a mileage tax at worst zero in that you are already paying the inspection and registration people and can now get rid of the people who keep track of and collect the tax money from the service stations.

This would have the added benefit of letting people see just how much money they are paying in road taxes in a given year, which I suspect would come as a shock to many. While I am personally opposed to making the following mandatory, it would certainly be easy enough for most people to, say, once a month note how many miles they have gone multiply that by the cost per mile on their registration and send the gov. a check. This would lessen the shock at the size of the bill at the end of the year but likely make it easier for the average paycheck to paycheck Joe. This would also be what brings the net collections cost to zero or near zero as the people who now process the checks from the filling stations would process the checks from the end users.

27

**whatsittoya ** Isn’t the way you would like it implemented already accomplished by the gas tax, using a much simpler method.

I think part of the problem (if not the whole thing) is that CA and IIRC OR have very high gas taxes, and people on the border and long haul truckers are able to buy gas at a much lower price, with the tax not even going to fix CA roads. In a way it is helping subsidizing other states roads.

This caused a spiral of sorts w/ the high tax states raising taxes (which is exactly the wrong way to go about it) which cause more people to seak fuel outside the state (this is the reason why), which allows border states to lower gas taxes (or at least not raise them) due to the windfall.

A while back I heard a trucker inteviewed, and he said it’s SOP for truckers to fill up in he border states before entering CA, and if they must get fuel in CA only to get enough to get back out again.

28

For the naysayers-the trucking industry has done this for ages. All those colored stickers seen on or around the cab door represent fuel tax registries. I had to keep a log of miles driven in x state, laden and unladen, and how much fuel was purchased, and where. This would allow transmission of tax monies paid at the pump to the states whose roads were used by the Interstate Fuel Tax Association.

29

Fitting vehicles with GPS systems to track mileage has some drawbacks:

  • It would be expensive to install in each new car.
  • It would be expensive to retrofit older cars.
  • Some regard it as an invasion of privacy.

Though it may not be as accurate, a much simpler solution is for the gas pump to add a per-gallon tax based on the type of vehicle.

When filling up for gas, the gas pump would simply need to know what kind of vehicle is being filled in order to calculate tax. If, for example, it were filling a type vehicle that gets 50 MPH, the gas pump would add more tax per gallon. If it were filling a vehicle that gets 10 MPH it would add less tax per gallon.

Again, this will not be as accurate as GPS, since knowing the type of vehicle will only give you an approximation of gas mileage. But it sure would be a lot simpler to implement such a system vs. GPS tracking.

30

As I understand it The mileage tax is already in effect on many interstates / turnpikes, without a transponder.

You get on the turnpike at exit X, and receive a card. You get off at exit Y, and the nice toll booth operator takes your money based on the distance between exits. Optionally, you can purchase a transponder (ie EZ Pass or Fast Lane) if you don’t want to deal with the card-n-operator.

Interstates & other major highways carry the majority of traffic - wouldn’t it be more efficient to install toll booths at the entrace / exit ramps of these & collect the tax there? Sure, it’s not 100% ‘fair’, but that’s true of all of the proposed systems so far.

I know this approach would have it’s downside too (just think of the rush hour problems) but if a mileage tax must be implmented, this seems to me the sanest way to do it.

31

What about the student in Ringo’s link (which is basically a transcript of the story I saw on the news)? Students traditionally don’t have a lot of money to begin with. (Yes, he had a BMW before he bought his hybrid; but it could have been a gift instead of something he bought himself.) They frequently have to commute to school. Or take my example of people who moved out of L.A. By your argument it sounds as if you’re saying, ‘Well, they moved farther away. Let them pay more, or move closer to their jobs!’ Which is the same as saying, ‘If you don’t want to pay a mileage tax, why don’t you sell your $100,000 house and move into a $750,000 house in L.A. instead?’ If they could afford to live in an equivalent area in the city, don’t you think people would rather do, instead of spending a couple of hours on the freeway every day?

While a mileage tax may seem fair on its surface, it hits hardest those people who have little or no choice but to drive long distances. As other people have said, the fuel tax is already a use tax. According to the CBS story I saw, fuel taxes are about 25% of the retail price of fuel – currently about 50 cents/gallon.

Governments, especially California’s, want to reduce pollution. They also want to fund the infrastructure. They can’t have it both ways. If people buy more efficient, less-polluting cars, then they’re going to lose fuel tax revenues. If they replace the fuel tax with a mileage tax, people will not have as large an incentive to buy more efficient, less-polluting vehicles.

But both goals need to be achieved. People must switch to more efficient vehicles, and the infrastructure must be maintained. Since both goals must be achieved, how should it be done?

If, as whatsittoya suggests, mileage taxes are paid annually, then millions of people might be hit with a large tax bill. Depending on when they registered their cars, this could be at a very bad time (for example, Christmas or tax time). People who are forced by their financial situations to live far from their jobs or schools will be hit disproportionatly. There would be no incentive to replace gas guzzlers with gas sippers. On the other hand, adding a penny more tax to each gallon of gas purchased would be transparent to the users, as it would be hidden in the normal fluctuations of gas prices. As fuel prices continue to rise, people would be more willing to buy efficient cars.

So a hike in fuel taxes would accomplish both things. More revenues would go to the upkeep of our roads and bridges, and more people would buy less-polluting cars. Money for the roads, fewer emissions in the environment. A mileage tax would only address the revenue, and do nothing about the environment.

32
      • The matter here is simple, and this is only that the state governments of Oregon and California have been overrun by communists. They don’t seek any real solutions to any real problems, only the priviledges to create more laws. They might as well just be honest and come out and say “People with incomes under 75K can’t own cars anymore, but the peons aren’t off the hook–you poor fuckers are paying more taxes for busses now, busses that we will control. Fuck you.”
        …
  • The rational thing here would be to charge hefty graduated sales taxes based on the vehicles’s weight. Lighter vehicles usually use less fuel and wear out roads less as well. But–as I said, saving roads and redusing pollution has little to do with it. Like good communists, most of the fanancial burden of what they have proposed would fall predominantly on the poor.
    ~
33

What are you trying to tax for? If it is the environmental damage of burning a gallon of gasoline, then gasoline should be taxed. If it is the wear & tear on roadways, then mileage should be taxed. If, in addition to raising funds, you are seeking to internalize a cost, then the behavior creating the cost needs to be taxed.

34

Not necessarily. Heavier vehicles cause more wear and tear than light, fuel-efficient cars.

Anyway, why GPS instead of a simple odometer? A GPS receiver can be disabled with a piece of aluminum foil placed over the antenna. The receiver will think it’s sitting in an indoor garage. (Not that I’d endorse an odometer-based mileage tax either. I’m just wondering.)

35

An odometer base will charge you for mileage outside of the region, a GPS can be programmed to add up mileage only within a specified area.

36

Right. I’m just saying that if the amount of driving affects the condition of the road, then the amount of driving is what should be taxed. Conceviable, there could be a tax schedule based on weight (& wheelbase? Tire width? Heck if I know!) so that a person with a Geo would pay a smaller tax per mile than a person with a Canyonaro (sp?).

37

Apparently my last post was too long as no one seems to have noticed that I said the tax should be weight/wheels based, or that there could be a option to pay monthly to avoid the big annual hit. As js_africanus said above “the amount of driving is what should be taxed.” I can sympathize with a student or anyone else that has to drive many miles each day as I had a job not that long ago that required me to commute 40 miles each way. In fact in my current job the commute varies but is rarely under 10 miles each way and is often much more than that. My point is, however, that the person who incures the wear on the roads is the person that should be paying for it. I just don’t think that my grandmother should have to pay for the extra wear and tear that I am responsible for. Another thing, the student you mentioned has gone to a hybrid but what about someone who goes to full electric? This person will, under the current system, be paying no gas tax and thus none of the wear that they are responsible for particularly as most electrics tend to be heavy because of all the batteries.

One last point I want the tax to be noticable. I think people should notice what they actually pay the government. I don’t like the idea of hiding it “in the normal fluctuations of gas prices.” People should be aware of what they pay the govenrment the same way they should be aware of what they pay anybody.

38

You’re correct if we are only concerned about replenishing the roads, rather than improving them to ease congestion.

Then, especially, my #3 proposition might not do anything to ease maintenance of L.A. area roads, for example, since going on them at a crawl would do just as much damage as fast, but all the time spent in traffic jams is economically inefficient. In fact, I can’t think of a less productive way to spend one’s waking hours.

So, a tax on entering a certain very congested area would not only raise revenue to improve the roads (which would of course lead to more congestion, but nothing’s perfect,) but the disincentive to enter the area would cut down on the people who do so, thus improving the quality of life and the economic productivity of those who do enter, since they will have more hours to spend working and buying stuff.

You’d have to trade it off of course against the people who will be unable to enter due to the monetary strain, but it might be worth it on a net basis.

39

The people arguing about road maintence and govt revenue are missing the main point of this tax IMHO.

This is about giving the government a fine grained way of controlling congestion. Cities can no longer afford to put more and more of it’s valuable space under pavement and congestion is majorly affecting productivity. Fuel tax is simply a too blunt instrument to use to try and curb congestion since it affects large areas equally.

Whether the added expense and beaurocracy of a mileage tax is worth it is anyones guess.

40

The government doesn’t need to control congestion, outside of building more roads, that is. Given a fixed infrastructure, congestion is a natural self-limiting process.

Does anyone seriously think that a couple dollar tax is going to shuttle people away from areas that have horrible time wasting traffic, when the traffic itself doesn’t? I would bet that if you asked the drivers, they’d be happy to pay $2 to get out of the traffic, the traffic is a better motivator than a bit of money.

There are better ways to get taxes for entering certain areas than tracking the movements of your populace. Electronic toll tags work at full driving speed, and are fairly reliable. But any attempt at tax or toll for entering specific areas is going to require toll booths to handle people who are not equipped with the electronics.

Given how privacy groups froth at the mouth over RFID (radio barcode tags), the direct tracking of vehicles will probably make their heads explode.