Oregon Governor Proposes Vehicle Mileage Tax

tiedyejeremy writes "As covered by the Crosscut Blog, the Governor of Oregon, Ted Kulongoski, is proposing a change in the funding of the Oregonian transportation system that drops gasoline taxes and, by way of GPS tracking, taxes the number of miles driven, to the tune of 1.2 cents per mile. The reason for the proposed change is that lower fuel consumption via fuel efficiency will leave the system underfunded. The concerns involve government tracking of the movements of vehicles within the state, though this has been denied by ODOT official, James Whitty. I'm wondering how this affects people using the Interstate System and private roads, and if the outputs can or will be used by law enforcement to check alibis."

Comments

Re:Great idea - it can replace the Gas Tax!

[Marxist Hacker 42]

It's either/or: If the gas pump detects your GPS computer, it charges you $.012/mile. Otherwise it charges you $.25/gallon. Or thereabouts, I haven't heard what the new gas tax portion is going to be.
 
Oh, and also it's only on NEW cars- old cars are grandfathered into the gas tax.

Actually it is exactly like that

[SuperKendall]

Then you raise the tax. What's the downside? It's not like people are going to consume less gas if the tax goes up.

Actually, it's exactly like that. When the price of gas was up summer travel plummeted which impacted tourist destinations everywhere, even stuff in the same state where most of the visitors came from. Also less needed visits like mall visits or museum visits go down, as people cut back on non-essential travel.

Re:WTF do they need GPS for?

[profplump]

You really think an odometer is harder to tamper with than a GPS tracking unit?

Ignoring direct alteration of tracking data stored on media that you have physical access to -- which is well within the realm of possibility for anyone with a JTAG interface (and quite probably anyone with a serial interface) -- you could simply add a local GPS simulator to your vehicle so the government-mandated unit always got radio signals telling it the car was sitting in your driveway. Such hacking is totally wireless -- it requires no electrical interface to the GPS system -- so it could be added/removed or activated/deactivated even by a brain-dead tax-dodger.

Re:Great idea - it can replace the Gas Tax!

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Free health care and you pay less in taxes than Americans. Most Americans insist that isn't true, and it's not if you make over a million a year.

There may be a reason that most Americans insist this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_rates_of_Europe

Not only is the income tax higher - often considerably - but on top of that there's that lovely VAT.

But hey, enjoy your fantasies.

Re:Great idea - it can replace the Gas Tax!

[cortesoft]

I am not going to argue that we Americans pay more or less in taxes, but your link doesn't really make your point. For one, as the large banner at the top of the page points out, the numbers presented may or may not be inaccurate. Secondly, even assuming the numbers are correct, they appear to reference the top income tax rate. Not knowing the lower tax rates, how income is calculated for tax purposes, and other information, is is impossible to determine the effective tax rate as compared to the United States. Showing a chart of the alleged top tax rates in other countries doesn't really demonstrate anything actually.

Why New Jersey won't let you pump gas

[billstewart]

I don't know about Oregon, but when I lived in New Jersey they tried to change the gas-pumping law, so I got to see what the politics around it were.

• Safety - if you let amateurs pump gas instead of trained professionals, you'd have gas stations exploding right and left, the way they do in the rest of the country, like every week! The only reason you don't see that on national TV is that it's so routine, it only makes it to local news, right?
• Grandma. Your Grandma - Making consumers pump gas would mean that your grandma is going to have to get out of the car into the snow on her walker to pump her gas, because most gas stations won't have Full Service, and the ones that do will charge far more than for self serve and your grandma won't be able to afford it. Yes, the newspapers really do get letters like that any time they propose changing the law. New Jersey's full-serve gas is almost always cheaper than self-serve across the border in PA or NY; I suspect Oregon's isnt'. (Here in California, gas stations have to pump gas for handicapped people for no extra charge, but our gas taxes are about 50 cents higher than most of the country's, so grandma's still getting ripped off.)
• Small non-chain gas stations - AFAICT, this is the real issue - small gas stations that mainly make money by fixing cars but also pump gas are able to compete with the bigger chain-owned stations if everybody has to have full-serve gas, but with self-serve, a big-chain station can have one cashier serving a dozen pumps, and the little guys can't compete, especially if they don't have room to expand, which typically they don't.

A few years back in was in NJ on business, and pulled into a gas station to refill my car. The guy said his guy who pumped gas was on lunch break and wouldn't be back for 10 minutes, so I went and pumped my gas, having forgotten that that was highly illegal, and he yelled at me when I went to pay. Fortunately, I didn't blow up the gas station or force anybody's grandma out into the cold and snow while I was there :-)

Re:Taxation without representation

[digitalunity]

First, let me tell you my qualification to discuss Oregon taxes. I lived there for 12 years, and worked there as an out of stater from Washington for 8.

Currently, something like 45 states have a sales tax. Oregonians have rejected a sales tax for a variety of reasons, one of which being that they think the income tax won't go away entirely and they will just get double taxed.

Also, rich people certainly pay more in absolute dollars per capita under an income tax but it's not linear. Higher bracket households have disproportionately more tax deductions than lower income households and don't pay the same percentages.

Sales tax doesn't entirely fix this disparity since higher income households are the most likely to make major purchases from out of state due to availability of the types of goods they often buy.

One serious annoyance for me was that I worked about 3 miles into Oregon while living in Washington and had to pay OR state income tax while receiving no tangible benefits for this tax. I used about 6 miles of road per day, that's it. And to top it off, my state income tax didn't even give me the right to vote on HOW they spend my money.

So, back to your question. Sales tax is generally favorable to income tax in my opinion. I don't think it will ever work for Oregon though. They depend on workers from southern Washington to prop up their income tax and that would disappear if they switch to a sales tax. Also, literally billions of dollars annually are pumped into the Portland metro area by shoppers from WA state looking to avoid their own sales tax.

Yes, its illegal but it happens every day.

Re:Taxation without representation

[Overzeetop]

I prefer using a gross receipts tax. Any money you receive in return for goods or services is generally recorded (unless it's an under the table transaction, which is currently invisible anyway). You pay a small percentage on that. No deductions, no exclusions. You can have a sliding scale percentage, but all the money is on the table. I'd like to see it identical for personal and corporate entities.

We have a GRT for businesses in my town, and it's very difficult to game. Of course it's a fraction of a percent, so hiding a transaction here or there doesn't really help much. I think I figured once that the federal government could live on 2-3% GRT. My mother hated the idea because she was about to sell a house, and that seemed unfair. I pointed out she just gave 6% to some fool who did nothing but put a sign in her yard - and how much was it worth to defend that land and guarantee her right to own it in the first place. She wasn't swayed :-)