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NC Man Fined For Using Vegetable Oil As Fuel
mdsolar writes "The News and Observer reports on an Charlotte, NC driver who has been fined $1000 for not paying a fuel tax when he fills his tank with vegetable oil. Perhaps the funniest quote is this one: '"With the high cost of fuel right now, the department does recognize that a lot of people are looking for relief," said Reggie Little, assistant director of the motor fuel taxes division. "We're not here to hurt the small guy, we're just trying to make sure that the playing field is level."' Sure, since the field is so plainly tilted against Arab oil interests."
Regardless of whether the law is against him or not, the very fact the state is going to fine him is going to be bad press for the state itself.
Does anyone else get hungry when they smell biodiesel exhaust? Reminds me of McDonald's.
Damn Yankees.
Like a woman scorned?
HARDLY.
That pales in comparison with the fury of a government that isn't getting it's "cut".
We truly lost our freedoms when it became accepted that the government has an inalienable right to a "cut" of ALL transactions!
Corporatism != Free Market
It's fair enough really. The tax is for road usage, not petrol usage. The bowser is just the fairest place to take it. That's why farmers get to use a "special" coloured diesel that has less tax on it.
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
Hopefully they will lose the point in legislature and put the investigators on the unemployment line. Just another version of cops with bad attitudes and power trips.
That most states use some or all of the fuel taxes to help defray the cost of road improvements / maintenance (no one said they do a *good* job of this) Someone who is "home-brewing" fuel, whether it be bio-diesel, ethanol, or used cooking oil, ends up essentially using the roads for "free" as they don't pay the fuel tax.
I few options might be to allow home-fuelers to purchase a license (cheap), and be expected to pay more on the yearly state taxes. The license would allow the state to put the tax payment on the honor system (sort of like Michigans' expectation that people will report how much stuff they bought over the internet, and pay the appropriate state taxes on it), with some sort of check. Perhaps a random checking of X percent of the licensees state tax return, and go after the people who didn't pony up. Even go so far as to keep it (relatively) friendly, offer them the chance to pay the extra, no penalty, no crime, if they pay, subject dropped, if not, get mean. By keeping it friendly, there would be the hope of more people switching, get enough people using home-fueling, and then you can start selling licenses for fuel stations, providing alternative fuel(s), and charging the state fuel tax per-gallon, and phase out the licenses at that time.
While I don't know about the laws here in Michigan regarding this sort of thing, I know they've been floating the idea of doing away with the gas tax, and instead raising the sales tax. The thinking being that this would get visitors from out-state paying a bit more, so even if they don't fill up, they're still paying (some) towards the roads they drive on...
Do you see the FNORDS? I refuse to post anonymously, as I am fireproof!
I thought harassing alternative fuel pioneers was ridiculous when it happened in the UK, and railed against it. Now it is happening in the US too. Oil companies own us like dealers own their junkies. It sucks.
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
NC has a 20.2 cpg subsidy for B20 http://www.globalsubsidies.org/IMG/pdf/biofuels_su bsidies_us.pdf which he is not getting since he is buying his oil at the store. Since he is basically using B100, the state
should be paying him 5*20.2-29.9(use tax)=71.1 cpg. So, fining him for this seems about as funny as it gets.s -selling-solar.html
--
No Joke! Rent solar power and fix your electric rates for 25 years: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
C'mon, you could at least mention that the gas tax is really an indirect tax on road use. You might even point out that the fine is intended to offset his use of the NC road system and has absolutely nothing to do with how he fuels his car.
Do we want to subsidize motorists who use alternate fuels by exempting them from the taxes on road use? Maybe, maybe not. But they're not exempt yet, so this guy has to pay his fair share. Not that surprisingly, really.
The tax is for road usage, not petrol usage.
This is true but charging the biodiesel user hardly "levels the playing field" and the punishment is silly. Big oil people have far greater resources for figuring taxes owed and paying them. If the state wanted to be fair, they could have figured the taxes for him and demanded payment. Slapping him with a fine in excess of what's owed is only something that should be done if he used the kind of scam accounting big oil companies use.
Something stinks and it's not biodiesel.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
It goes toward Arab oil interests because it penalizes the consumer for using anything but gasoline, therefore shuttling more dollars toward the big oil machine. Yes, you could say that there is no more tax than you would pay for gasoline, but if you're not getting a price break to use alternative fuels, it's not going to happen.
wtf is this tagged "humor"?
It's obviously not a joke, and it's certainly not funny that people who are actually trying to make a difference are getting donkey punched by the local authorities.
I wonder what the gov'ment will do when people with electric cars who charge off of solar start showing up. Do they tax us for being green just because we are using the roads? Do we get punished like this guy? It seems the whole road tax system is going to have to be revamped in the coming years.
If the government was serious about finding minimizing our dependency on foreign oil then this man would be exempt as he does not use foreign oil. Let's get all non-foreign oil sources (including domestic sources, if at all feasible, I'm not sure if it is) exempt from these taxes, and raise the taxes elsewhere. That way more and more people will avoid foreign oil. Then once we've achieved 0 use of foreign oil, we can start slowly putting those taxes back on, while raising the foreign oil taxes even further and lower the taxes elsewhere (wherever it was increased to make up for the loss of tax from the exemption in the first place) so it will continue to remain profitable to use domestic sources. Then, if its still an issue which I think it will be, we can repeat the entire process with more environmentally friendly fuel methods.
Or we can keep invading countries and enrichen US companies that import foreign oil.
Using openSUSE instead of Windows since 9th of October, 2007 and liking it.
That's a cheap shot at Arabs. And untrue. Did you know that the top 2 sources of crude oil are Canada and Mexico? Followed by Saudi Arabia and Venezuela? 3 of the top 4 sources of oil are non-Arab.
So what? The people will move out of the state because of it? Someone who has a good job, children in school and family members will decide to move because the state fined someone $2k for using unauthorized fuel? What else would happen, the state will be ranked last on 'environment friendly states' list? In other words, the state is not the same as a company, a state's bad image is harder to link to immediate loss of profits.
Time to get really nervous if you have to push your car...
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
to see that the spirit of independence, innovation and entrepreneurship still runs strong in the heart of this great country.
A modern day witchhunt.
You're absolutely right. I wish I had mod points, and I wish my friends list weren't limited to 200 names -- you deserve a spot.
Americans have become so used to their loss of freedoms in day-to-day life, they forget how absolutely invasive and totalitarian their government has become. Want to be innovative with your fuel or save a little money? Big Brother didn't get his cut, so here's a fine for $2000, and if you do it again, we'll toss you in jail as a threat to "society". It's just like the mafia telling the new business owner on the block that he needs to pay a hefty protection fee like his neighbours do, and it would be a shame if someone burnt down his shop otherwise.
The sad thing is, I fully expect to see many misguided Slashdotters stand up for the state here and defend this ridiculous fine.
He who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
Time to get really nervous if you have to push your car...
What if it's solar-powered, will they tax the Sun?
Table-ized A.I.
Back when I lived in New Jersey, I had oil heat, and if I'd forgotten to check the oiltank dipstick in a while and ran out of oil at night, I could get a can of diesel at the gas station to restart my furnace until the oil people could get there. It was really convenient.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I'm reminded of this quip from my fortunes file:
"We will have solar energy as soon as the utility companies solve one technical problem--how to run a sunbeam through a meter."
While not exactly legal over here in Germany either, many people run their Diesel cars on a mix of commercial grade diesel and vegetable oil, which comes even often used from fast food outlets if you can believe it.
;-)
It's quite easy to spot (or smell, rather) these cars when following them as you develop a sudden hunger for french fries out of the blue!
Ever wondered whats wrong with the world? http://www.ishmael.org/
There are a few gas stations near me that sell actual biodiesel.. presumably that's properly taxed.
I imagine he's being hit by the same kind of statute that would stop you using red or farm diesel in your car.
Mod parent down, completely untrue on the measure/fine part.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
In July the law is changing over here, so that people producing biodiesel for their own use (and less than some ridiculously huge amount, like 2500 litres) will be exempt from paying fuel duty on it.
Breaking stupid laws works, people. The sooner the US population wakes up to this idea, the better.
Singapore takes a similar approach, however, it is also easier to get by without a car in city-state. American cities could probably benefit from the congestion tax implemented in London, which applies to cars in the city during business hours; I know that NYC is looking into this. One major problem with taxing either gas or cars is that it is a regressive tax. Besides, it doesn't matter just how fuel efficient or expensive a car is, what matters is the emissions created during its use (and production). A carbon tax addresses these issues, because it is intended to be a revenue neutral tax, in which the money that is collected from corporations selling energy of fuels to consumers is returned when consumers file for taxes. This way, individuals can make their own short-term (driving habits) and long-term (car purchases) based on the premise that they can save by cutting down on their carbon emissions. http://www.carbontax.org/ By the way, you can't "really make taxation progressive by taxing the percentage of the vehicle's value to bring in the necessary revenue," because that's the same principal as sales tax which is the primary example of a regressive tax.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If you want to sit I'll tax your seat
If you take a walk I'll tax your feet...
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
Uh, I'm pretty sure the taxes are there to help build the roads that people are driving on. As cars get more enviornmentally friendly, the states will need to start finding new ways to tax them for using their infrastructures. Roads aren't exactly cheap to build you know, and maintaining them isn't cheap either.
Phil
It's called "making people reimburse society for the damage they do".
This is nothing new. Fuel for use in vehincles on farms does not have road tax applied to it. If you drive on public roads using that fuel you will be fined if caught. This is just special pleadiing that since it's vegetable based fuel he shouldn't have to pay road tax. Wrong. He gets to pay road tax just like the rest of us, or don't use that fuel on public roads.
Yes it may be an AC, but if you are going to make a claim. Back it up with a link something resembling proof please.
The burden of proof here rests on the poster originally making the assertion, not the respondant calling BS.
You can't prove they don't do something - Even official statements to the contrary wouldn't disprove the practice. OTOH, to support the GP's stance, he need only post a single instance of such fines occurring.
Eventually, we are all going to be driving cars that run on something other than gasoline.
/do/ need to be paid for, and today, they are in no small part paid for through gasoline taxes. If that revenue goes away, it's going to have to come from somewhere else.
The state will simply move the taxation to a different point.
If your car runs on hydrogen, they will tax hydrogen.
If your car runs on electricity, they will tax the electricity. Perhaps we will all have special power meters for plugging in our cars at night.
If it becomes too difficult to tax the fuel source, they will simply issue an annual tax based on your odometer reading. Perhaps you will be allowed to pay it in installments over the course of the year.
Government greed for your tax dollars aside, the roads and infrastructure
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
IPAFTTS (I programmed a fuel tax tracking system) and this is how it works. The trucking industry is *heavily* regulated. Truckers are required to keep log books recording much of their travels. In the end, it really doesn't matter too much what state you buy gas in - it's just delaying the inevitable. You track how many miles you drive in each state, and pay fuel taxes to each state based on miles. So you can fill up 2 miles over the border in Virginia, but if you drove 1,000 miles in North Carolina this quarter, you're still required to pay North Carolina taxes on those 1,000 miles as if you bought gas there.
The penalties for not filing your fuel taxes on time every quarter as pretty hefty too.
Yep, it's a royal pain in the ass.
Wow, thank you for deciding what fairness is. I had no idea they'd gotten around to giving someone authority to decide that "no ifs ands or buts." But it seems they picked the wrong person. If I had the job, I'd declare fairness states that the person who benefits most from the roads would pay the most in (road) taxes. That's not necessarily the person who uses them most. If two guys drive the same distance to work every day, and one gets paid minimum wage for doing backbreaking labor while the other gets a huge salary for sitting behind a desk, seems perfectly fair to me that the latter contributes more to road upkeep -- the roads are worth a lot more to him.
I'm awake! The answer is BONK!
If a state or city institutes a tax on carbon with the expressed purpose of spending the money neutralizing the taxed emissions it won't take long before the governing body is spending those taxes on other budget items or subsidies for large businesses that have no real benefit for the people paying the "carbon tax".
I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
Mark Twain
Also, things other then cars run on fuel. These people are also paying for the roads. Gas powered lawn mowers burn on the same fuel. I don't think there are many mowers that are running down streets, especially if they are the walk-behind kind. Generators can run on fuel. These also do not move down the road, so why are they taxed to pay for roads in the same way as fuel used to power a vehicle? It might not be "fair", but it would be smart to tax the cars. The reason is that gas prices have gotten to a point they are pinching people's budgets. They are not pinching the budget of the well-off (and neither would a car tax), they are pinching the lower (and in some cases even the middle) class. How long before people have to decide between gas to get to work, or food to feed themselves or their children? This sort of decision is also bad for the economy when you consider that the "extremely rich" make up such a small percentage of the US population. (Note: I am not a fan of any taxation, but I think that to say a "fuel tax" is fair is BS.) The guy was evading taxes (even if he didn't realize it), and must pay the price. End of story. No, he was avoiding paying what is essentially a collective monopoly (after all there is an oil cartel). These are the same people who adjusted the price of E-85, so it would cost the same as (or close to) regular unleaded fuel. These are companies who are fronts for oil producing countries. These taxes and fines only strengthen their potential monopoly by closing out a free market (not a huge fan of that ideal either). It constrains the abilities of the local consumer to come up with an alternate fuel setup and discourages them from using anything that is auto-fuel. BTW, if he was running a 100% electric car, is he dodging taxes because he is using the roadways but is not paying gas taxes? How is this ANY different?
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
Actually they're looking at taxing per mile with GPS encoders in your car showing how far you drove.
I believe Oregon has already piloted said program. The problem seems to be as people push for higher per mile return on the fuel it uses their revenues go down. So now they feel they should get a per-mile rate instead of a per-gallon rate.
I'm a bit surprised this was tagged with humor, as it's not really funny and it's really happening to this guy and sets a precedent for other states to come after all of the folks interested in not burning oil products to make their cars move.
I'm sure we'll see some asinine proposals to add taxes to wind power generation/solar generation that is done by individuals to live off-grid or to reduce their consumption because once again with the taxes placed on the electrical usage reducing your usage of it via these methods is stripping the state of it's ability to generate revenue.
Heaven forbid the states actually reduce their output as well. There sure seems to be a lot of waste in government, at least in my experience with seeing the back end of government entities.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
Minnesota Public Radio runs a regular (every 3 months or so) chat with former governors. Wendell Anderson (the one on the cover of Time Magazine in the 1970's holding up a big Walleye...or was it a Northern, oh well, you get the idea) and Arne Carlson and maybe they had one other but I can't remember his name.
They both clearly, seriously (and humorously) claimed that writing actual letters (not e-mail) to state legislators or governors had an impact. And if they got 3-5 letters, they assumed that small number of people sufficiently motivated to write and post a letter represented a much larger number of people who felt the same way.
Maybe it's just in Minnesota or in the past, or both, but I doubt it.
So because I am better or more efficient at deriving value out of a service/good, I should be punished more than someone who is less efficient or worse at deriving value from the same service/good? Ok....
As long as I am not purposely hurting others, at the end of the day, how I derive that value is really irrelavent.
It isn't a matter of benefit, but rather a personal act of deriving. The former implies the state provides/gives unfairly more value to the rich rather than to the poor (in which case I would agree with you). Which is BS, the state doesn't provide jack. It reallocates while taking its own transaction cost cut and then some. Here, all customers are allocated the same service/good. The later (derives) implies personal action and drive to generate productive value for society from the service/good.
If the poor guy wanted to derive more value from the infrastructure, then he should strive and struggle to do so (getting a higher paying job being just one of many options).
besides, most of the people who will be paying the tax will be the ones least able to afford it; at least here in the northeast US. I have friends whose parents are moving from their house of 25 years, because of the property taxes. Another energy tax(carbon tax), above the already high energy prices, and yes I know federal,state, and local taxes are a huge part of that, would exacerbate an already significant problem.
Now I would support an incentive that encouraged these alternative, cleaner, lower carbon, whatever, fuels; say lowering the energy taxes that already exist on them to encourage the usage. That would be a fine incentive that would have the same effect.
- Mike
Once you've lost your temper, you've lost the argument - Me
If two guys drive the same distance to work every day, and one gets paid minimum wage for doing backbreaking labor while the other gets a huge salary for sitting behind a desk, seems perfectly fair to me that the latter contributes more to road upkeep -- the roads are worth a lot more to him.
I'd say the roads would be worth a lot more to the first guy who'd likely be homeless without them.
But you could also argue that if the minimum wage worker lost his ability to get to work, he'd be a lot more screwed than the rich guy, who probably has some savings or at least credit to live on for a bit. Heck, the rich guy might be able to just work from home, whereas that wouldn't be possible for most minimum wage jobs. So who really benefits more from the road - the guy who absolutely needs it to get by, or the guy who could get along fine without it?
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
Sales tax is regressive because if you are poor, sales tax is a greater percentage of your income (i.e. a greater burden) than if you are rich. While you may buy more goods total if you are rich, the percentage of sales tax stays the same.
For example, say there are two people buying a car, Richard (who is wealthy) and Paul (who is poor).
Even though Paul spends $40,000 LESS on his cars, he's still paying 5 TIMES the percentage of his income. $1000 for Paul is 5 times the burden that $3000 is for Richard. Do you see why sales tax is regressive?
In contrast, federal income tax is progressive because the percentage increases as your income increases.
@ASP.NET's parent-teacher meeting: "Little Johnny.NET is very bright, but he doesn't play well with others."
You're forgetting that Richard eats out while Paul eats at home*. That Richard spends $100k on clothes a year while Paul pays $300/year for his clothing. That Richard goes to the dealership for his maintenance while Paul does his own for the most part. And wtf is Paul doing buying a car costing a whole year's income?
Using just the car is a bad example. First - it's not an annual purchase.
We have the issue where 'rich' is more a statement of assets available more than it's a statement of income. Sure, if you make a million bucks a year you're 'rich' - But we still have 'millionaires' declaring bankruptcy. A large income helps, but it's not a guarantee. Just look at comparative debt loads.
Now, by the arguement that Richard is likely NOT spending all of his money while John is, would be an arguement that the sales tax is regressive. Still, if Richard goes hog wild while John is a careful spender, Richard can still end up paying a higher percentage of income as sales tax vs John.
Look at it as an encouragement to save. Which is a good thing.
*Restaurant food is generally subject to sales tax, while food from a market generally isn't.
I don't read AC A human right