Miles driven tax instead of a gas tax?

Great Debates
1

There’s a proposal afoot in the California legislature to scrap the gasoline tax in favor of a tax on miles driven. The mileage would be tallied by a tracking device which would transmit data to a GPS.

Perhaps a long-term benefit my result from such a tax, since it would discourage suburban sprawl no matter what kind of cars people drive. But it also seems to be a reward to those who drive gas guzzlers. Not only would they not be taxed for the gas they consume, but they would also not be paying proportionately for wear and tear on the roads. And it’s hard, in my opinion, to justify asking an office assistant who commutes 70 miles round trip in his/her Tercel, while a plastic surgeon who drives a fourth of the distance in his/her Escalade, but uses the same amount of fuel, should have to pay less tax on their driving. And of course the drivers of hybrid vehicles are livid at this proposal.

So what is this really? Would it be another example of our utter and total refusal to deal with our dependence on oil, of neocons gone wild; or would it be a blessing in disguise?

2

Sweden tried this in the 70’s and 80’s with diesel cars. It was an environmenatal thing since the diesels of the time got good gas milage but polluted a lot (not true anymore, except for carbondioxide). However, there was so much cheating going on with these meters, the system was finally trashed.

I hope the legislators over there learn from our example, and check out what went wrong here.

3

Well… there are many problems.

On the face of it, I am definitely for the reduction of suburban sprawl. There are many negative effects of this, and I think it is certainly a bad thing. I don’t think that everyone should have to live in a city, but we should focus more on decentralized planning that allows mixed zones of every density. This kind of planning will be too little, too late in places like California, though. Honestly if all of the suburbs were to move into more dense areas that were recreated to alleviate the problem you would just have more people moving into the older suburbs. That would just make it to where there would be more people, making the problem worse. If you were to fit LA into a smaller area with the density of NYC, what would happen to all of the old homes? Somebody would take them. The only way to get rid of them would to be to destroy the old developments. Who would buy the homes? THe government? That would be wicked expensive.
Secondly, if there was a tax on miles driven, and fuel, then I could see how it might discourage traffic, and encourage shorter commute times, but not urban sprawl.

Thirdly, what about privacy? I don’t want a GPS tracking everywhere I go. I could be on board if it only kept a track of miles driven inside California to be taxed and miles driven outside to be free. That would be a sensible solution, but exact locations are way too big-brotherish for me. You couldn’t tax by odometer readings, because peolpe would raise a stink about miles driven outside of California.

The best solution, I believe would be to have a computer determine where you are and use that information to formulate a tax on the fly without recording records of where your vehicle has been, so the only extractable data would be that how much money you owe.

Maybe they should just set up tolls and require every driver to set up an easypass type system. Make every owner get one and have it required to report it at inspection. Or you could have a simple GPS system that would report the GPS location at engine start and stop so you could determine start and endpoints that would be used to extract tax information.

The goals are good, but I think there are better ways.

Honestly, I think the best effect would be to simply raise the gas taxes. Gas taxes have built in distance calculation that is penalized by driving a Hummer. I would make the taxes for commercial vehicles the same as to avoid a penalty on the businesses that have to use them. I have no sympathy that have an excursion to commute 2 hours on the LA freeway on a daily basis. Sorry I just don’t. People will argue that they need bigger cars for X reason, but its simply that they have found a use for all of the extra space as before. There were no SUVs in the 70’s like there are today. Sure the wagoneer or surburban are counterexamples, but suburbans weren’t that common, and wagoneers were basically station-wagons.

Haha, you could have a deduction for people driving vans, who actually need the space and aren’t just trying to be cool.

It might increase the drive for Hybrid technology, which wouldn’t be a bad thing either.

4

This is a good example of why the miles-driven tax would be terrible. If you were using the van to carpool, there’d presumably be a deduction for that, but you’d need to document that and there would have to be clerks and inspectors at the state tax office to ensure that there are no abuses or fraud.

5

I don’t see this proposal as very effective in reducing the number of miles driven nor do I see why the government might be interested in this concept generally.

The government might be interested in trying to charge relative to the amount of damage to the roads. Presumably if two drivers drove the same number of miles, the one with the heavier, less fuel efficient vehcile would cause the most road wear–this proposal doesn’t address that.

If we are concerned about traffic congestion, the number of miles driven isn’t as relavent as when and where one drives. My midnight 100-mile trip into the boondocks doesn’t mean anything compared to a 7:30AM 10 mile entry into LA.

6

What’s wrong with a gas tax?

7

Frankly I don’t see any possible downside to installing a tracking device in millions of vehicles registered in CA. Americans just love telling the government the details of their every movement, and I’m sure the costs will be negligible.

This is much simpler and less obtrusive than collecting tax on each gallon of gas sold.

8

Nothing, but according to the braintrusts who’ve thought this one up, thanks to hybrid technology and growing fuel economy in many cars, gas taxes simply aren’t generating enough revenue for the state.

It’s all about dollars to Sacramento.

The social engineering angle only plays until you realize that reducing the number of miles that people drive isn’t going to happen this way. People don’t drive the number of miles that they do because they want to, especially on the freeways in the major California metro areas. This isn’t going to reduce everyday traffic congestion or the smog it creates. People drive to get to places where they need to go. They drive to earn a living. It’d be nice if everyone could live a mile from their workplace, or could both live and work in areas and times that make public transporation convenient, but that’s not the case for many people.

Plus, I can’t imagine any good way to spin taxing someone for the miles they drive to go to the grocery store or to get medical care or to take themselves or their children to school. There’s no way to sell it. These are not optional trips, a place for cutting back, but there’s no way to make any kind of exception. A working mom who drives a Cavalier will have a schlep with her kids across LA to the one pediatric dentist covered under her insurance plan taxed just like the Hummer driver’s decision to run a couple of hours up the coast to his favorite Italian restaurant because he’s got a taste for veal piccata. How on earth can something so obviously regressive and illogical ever be offered as a serious solution to anything?

9

I’m foreseeing a horror of horrors: A cross between DMV and IRS offices.

shudder

10

Why do I get the feeling that the only reason this proposal is being floated instead of simply raising the gas tax is because doing the latter will hurt Big Oil?

11

Would making gas taxes a percentage of the cost instead of a per gallon rate help? As prices rise it would increase the revenue. I don’t know that it would make up for the reduction in usage from more fuel efficient vehicles though.

12

Are they kidding? The costs to implement and manage a system like this would have to be astronomical in comparison to the gas tax. Hundreds of millions of dollars of equipment and installation costs. Invoicing costs. Fraud control. I’m sure the people of CA would be more than happy to get one big bill every year than pay a few bucks a week when they fill their tank.

The sheer number of problems and costs with this plan makes me wonder who could possibly propose it with a straight face.

13

I was thinking about starting a thread on this. Probably deserves a Pit thread, too. I can see both pros and cons.[ul][li]Pro: Taxing by the mile encourages the government to increase throughput on the roads. Right now they collect taxes while vehicles are burning fuel while sitting in traffic jams. With a mileage tax, only distance travelled matters, so the state gains nothing from traffic jams. []Pro: With a mileage tax, they could base taxes directly on road wear caused. Heavy and small vehicles could be charges different rates per mile. []Pro: With a GPS implementation, the state could charge based on time-of-day and the specific road. So high-traffic, high-maintenance roads will cost more to travel. []Con: Invasive tracking of vehicles. []Con: Dis-encouragement for fuel efficient vehicles. Fuel efficiency reduces gas tax revenue (I think this is the real reason they’re considering this). Con: Expensive to implement and administer. The GPS tracking device would just be asking to be hacked and the security countermeasures would be expensive.[/ul]Overall, I think the negatives outweigh the positives.[/li]
Governor Arnold has not announced a stance on this. I’m thinking of writing him a letter to encourage him to come out against it.

14

This is just a bad idea plain and simple. It is draconian, will be unwieldy, and is just plain “unfair” in my mind.

15

First you have to explain how raising the gas tax will hurt Big Oil. Gas usage is pretty inelastic – as someone noted, people drive pretty much because they have to. And if astronomical gas prices and high cost of ownership haven’t driven people away from gas guzzling SUV’s and small trucks, then another few cents a gallon isn’t likely to do it.

It’s hard to imagine this particular initiative succeeding though, once you explain to people that they have to pay for a GPS transceiver and explain how easy it would be to slip down that slope towards handing out speed violations based on the GPS.

16

I googled this a little bit, and it’s unclear to me exactly what the main reasons for this sort of tax are. If they wanted to address congestion, this doesn’t really do it well. That would be better addressed by “congestion pricing” or one of the other alternatives proposed in this paper.

Most researchers in transportation seem to think that the best way to reduce vehicle miles traveled is to provide some sort of incentive or improvement, usually improved mass transit. The ‘big stick’ method of basically shaking your finger at people, telling them to drive less doesn’t change behavior much. A mileage tax pretty much amounts to this sort of method.

I agree that it could be an unwieldy, bureaucratic mess to administer a mileage tax, plus it would invade privacy and waste a lot of money that could be better spent elsewhere in the transportation budget.

However, reducing vehicle miles traveled is a good aim. I’d like to see legislators really try to do this. Too many people instantly assume that just because they drive a low-emissions vehicle, they are not polluting the environment. This is not necessarily true. As cars get to be cleaner, people have been driving them more, canceling out any improvements. (article)

My guess is that this is being proposed is because no politician wants to be the ‘bad guy’ who suggests raising the gas tax.

17

I think it’s a horriable idea that punishes the poor and middle lower class. These are the people who are willing to put up with long commutes to better themselves and families. They are also the ones who look to cars w/ good MPG’s, I’m not saying that a poor person is going to buy a new Pris, but they are not going to buy a Hummer either, and if they do have a long commute, will look at efficency more then luxery.

18

Raising the gas tax → higher cost per gallon → more incentive to economize gas use → less income for Big Oil.

I agree that gas use is pretty inelastic, but if people get pushed hard enough, I believe they will cut down their gas use to make ends meet, IMO.

I don’t even understand the need for a GPS; after all, every car already has a device that records how far you travel – the odometer.

19

It is just one more way to squeeze more money out of the suckers Oops I mean citizens. To borrow some of the replies from a thread I started elsewhere, I don’t own a car and I don’t drive. Therefore, I don’t care. So, let them be taxed. To the maximum possible.

20

I opened this thread to make that point. Housing in L.A. is expensive. If you want to buy a home, or pay lower rent, you need to move away. Many people found the housing market so expensive they’ve moved as far away as the Antelope Valley – 65 or 75 miles away from L.A. They put up with the long commutes and the expenditure of gasoline because… well, have you checked the price of a house in Brentwood or the Hollywood Hills lately?

Many of these suburban commuters aren’t ‘poor’. They may well be able to afford a fuel efficient car, and the fuel expenditures are lower than the increased rents or mortgages they’d pay to live closer. But for many, it’s a thin margin.