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

Great idea - it can replace the Gas Tax!

[R2.0]

Except for the part where they leave the gas tax in place.

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

[Shambly]

Wouldn't increasing the gas tax thereby further increasing the value of low gas mileage vehicle be preferable? I mean doesn't this just help the pocket book of SUV driving suburbanites vs hybrid driving people?

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

[edittard]

That plus it requires considerably more kit and labor to administer. Whether you agree with fuel tax or not, it has the advantage that it sort of collects itself.

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

[vlm]

GPS unit 1341235423523 bought 50 gallons of gas but only drove 50 miles per the GPS. Odd that Prius is only getting 1 MPG.

Aside from extreme examples, I look forward to watching tax agents bust down doors of people whom have poorly maintained cars because they "must" be tax cheats. My old 1980's plymouth horizon got 30 MPG on a good day, but when the choke stuck during winter I was lucky to get double digit MPGs on short trips.

I suspect the next step is location based taxes. For example parking a car within 500 feet of a church is free, yet anyone whom parks within 500 feet of an adult video stores will have their visit documented on a public web site and charged a $50 parking fee. Or anyone whom doesn't attend / park nearby a church every week will pay a higher tax "Y".

Then of course there are the known tobacco smokers whom drive within X feet of a public school where it's illegal to have or use tobacco products within X feet. Or gunowners. Etc.

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

[dgatwood]

What I don't get is this: why in h*ll would they put a privacy-violating GPS device in to count mileage when:

• GPS doesn't work reliably in cities with tall buildings, frequently losing signal, and thus completely unable to record mileage where it is most important to do so,
• GPS doesn't work reliably in mountainous terrain, frequently putting you miles off course (thus artificially inflating your drive distance by a mile in the course of a tenth of a second) or losing the signal entirely for miles at a time.
• GPS doesn't work in tunnels.
• GPS is trivially jammed or spoofed.
• Your car already has a perfectly good odometer.

Even if we assume that the GPS will merely be used to determine where you are, half the Oregon borders are in the mountains, so you may well find yourself getting billed for miles not driven within the state. Not to mention that you're probably adding a couple hundred bucks to the cost of every automobile, all for the sole purpose of giving the government more revenue.

To add insult to injury, at 1.2 cents per mile, you would have to go almost 17,000 extra miles in that hybrid beyond what you would have gotten on that amount of fuel in a non-hybrid car. With typical hybrids getting maybe 5-10% higher MPG on average, the break-even point is when the car has gone between 170k and 340k miles. If everybody just paid that same $200 to the state as a tax on the sale of a new vehicle, it would give the state probably twice as much money as they would make off of this, all for the same cost to the consumer, all without violating people's privacy.

Here's a more sane proposal: when you apply for your tags, make one line on the form be the current odometer reading. Charge an additional license fee based on the mileage. Once the vehicle starts going in for smog checks, this can be corroborated by periodic reporting by the smog check station, so there's low risk of significant cheating.

Allow people who do a substantial amount of out-of-state driving to apply for a tax credit on his/her personal income tax for driving outside the state. Require them to provide some corroborating evidence (receipts from out of state hotels or gas stations during the period in question, pay stubs proving an out-of-state job, etc.).

By making the small percentage of people who regularly drive outside the state spend an extra ten minutes filling out their income tax forms, you save the cost of additional hardware in new vehicles, additional hardware at the pumps (the cost of which will be paid by everyone), etc. and you avoid all the privacy questions. More to the point, since all new cars sold anywhere would then have to have these devices (since car makers won't build a separate model just for Oregon, even if these GPS devices only cost $100, my plan will save almost 2 billion dollars annually nationwide in unnecessary hardware when compared with the Oregon governor's plan.

Just to put that number in perspective, that's billion with a 'B'---enough money to bail out on the order of 20,000 home owners who are defaulting on their mortgages. Anyone in favor of something so asinine should be publicly flogged.... The people of Oregon deserve someone with better math and problem solving skills than this....

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

[dave562]

If the real problem involves electric vehicles, then they could... wait for it... increase taxes on electricity!! There you go. Problem solved. No need for intrusive GPS tracking. If the problem involves the batteries in hybrid cars, then they can pay some mathmeticians to calculate the cost savings of the batteries, and then tax the production or sale of the cars to offset the revenue lost. Once again, no tracking necessary.

Of course the REAL issue isn't completely related to the loss of revenues from the fuel tax. The real issue is that the government feels like they own us. They believe that they can go crazy with tracking us like merchandise. That is my big, fat, off-topic gripe for this thread. Our government has devolved from our fellow citizens serving their communities, to our fellow citizens trying to dictate our lives to us.

WTF do they need GPS for?

[Shakrai]

Why just use the fancy new technology called an odometer? Check it every time you renew your registration and collect the fees at that time.

Re:WTF do they need GPS for?

[tilandal]

Or they could just... increase the gas tax. I know. Its a maverick idea.

Re:WTF do they need GPS for?

[JoeMerchant]

Some South American countries use the tire tax, so everyone drives around on "superlast, hard as rocks" tires to beat the tax rate - can't be good for safety.

I think that taxing each gallon of fuel is the right way to go, if 0.24 isn't enough, make it 0.48 - we just demonstrated that the world doesn't end when gas passes $3 a gallon.

Taxing fuel:

• Collects the tax in small, easy to handle increments
• Rewards fuel efficient vehicles (which tend to be light and easy on the pavement)
• Still taxes based on roadway usage
• Doesn't require any potential invasions of privacy
• Isn't open to potential tampering (beyond bootleg fuel)

I think the governor is just talking to get himself heard, drivers of big gas hog vehicles (likely the majority of his constituency) will love the idea, but lawmakers would have to have several screws loose to think this is a good or practical idea.

I can solve this problem!

[uncreativeslashnick]

Here's a crazy idea. Instead of raising taxes in a tough economy, how about you do what everyone else is doing and tighten belt and reduce spending? Nah, you're right, that will never work...

Except weight and mileage DOES count...

[nweaver]

The problem is, fuel efficient cars weigh less, and therefore do less damage to the road.

Thus a gasoline tax is actually better at putting many of the costs on the actual source: heavier, less efficient vehicles. As a bonus, fuel taxes encourage smaller, lighter, more efficient cars which are better for society in the long run.

Astoundingly stupid

[Just Some Guy]

The amount of damage done to a road by a passing vehicle is a geometric? exponential? function of the weight of the vehicle. For instance, say a road will fail if a 100,000 pound vehicle drives over it. In that case, a 120,000 pound truck would do much more damage than two 60,000 trucks. At the low end, you reach a point where no damage is done at all. It's not possible to ruin a modern highway with bicycles, for example.

So you're justified in taxing vehicles proportionally to their weight, since more weight means more damage, which means more expensive repairs. Conveniently enough, gas mileage is a useful proxy for vehicle weight: the heavier they are, the more gas tax they pay per mile.

I have no love for Priuses, but it's insane to tax them the same as someone in a semi truck. There are two possible explanations that don't involve Gov. Kulongoski being a stark moron:

• This is a concession to the trucking industry or people who have to pay them, such as lumber companies who want to reduce transportation costs, or
• Big Brother can't wait to get here.

Any Oregonians have insight on the matter?

Re:Why not raise the tax on gas?

[Myopic]

Yes. This solution is so glaringly obvious that there must be some sinister reason they are ignoring it. I mean, seriously? You're going to go with a fancypants expensive satellite-based high-tech solution requiring lots of new legislation, training, infrastructure, and other costs, not to mention the overwhelming privacy violation -- instead of just raising the tax a little bit? What, seriously? I call shenanigans.