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GPS-Based System For Driving Tax Being Field Tested
An anonymous reader writes "Apparently, since gas consumption is going down and fuel efficient cars are becoming more popular, the government is looking into a new form of taxation to create revenue for transportation projects. This new system is a 'by-the-mile tax,' requiring GPS in cars so it can track the mileage. Once a month, the data gets uploaded to a billing center and you are conveniently charged for how much you drove. 'A federal commission, after a two-year study, concluded earlier this year that the road tax was the "best path forward" to keep revenues flowing to highway and transportation projects, and could be an important new tool to help manage traffic and relieve congestion. ... The commission pegged 2020 as the year for the federal fuel tax, currently 18.5 cents a gallon, to be phased out and replaced by a road tax. One estimate of a road tax that would cover the current federal and state fuel taxes is 1 to 2 cents per mile for cars and light trucks.'"
It seems to me like GPS provides other features than mileage tracking which the government could use.
If we are only concerned about tracking the mileage, there is already nice tool that does just this, couldn't it be used to also display how much it costs us in real time ? ;-)))
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taximeter
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This is great, especially as there is no way to abuse this.
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what the fuck man
If we end up with GPS systems in every car by 2020, I'd be interested how quickly the systems are used to also track your speed whenever they want to know.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage
Or, since the antenna would need to be somewhat exposed, just make a "sleeve" that blocks RF?
Just as a show of good faith, leave it off for trips to work and pop it on during long trips? Or just leave it on and claim you're a hermit?
If they instead mandated a counter in the ECM that tracked mileage, I'd think maybe I was all for it. But they want GPS "tracking", and they're not even hiding the fact. If they want money for highway/construction projects, then just jack up the gas tax. Gas consumption is directly related to mileage driven.
Keep your fucking GPS trackers out of my life.
So I guess they will have exemptions for older cars, cars that have value in original condition and adding/changing something will reduce value, etc.
For example - what would happen to the value of my all original '65 Porsche 356 if a hole was cut in the dash, another in the body for the antenna, etc? Not to mention running whatever they design off of a 44+ year old 6v electrical system...
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They could just check the odometer during emissions checking.
Plus, if they go through with something like this, then they'd better eliminate the fuel taxes. (fat chance, I know)
GPS would be infinitely useful for governments. In addition to tracking mileage they can automatically charge tolls and even issue speeding tickets.
Why not just continue to raise the fuel taxes to generate revenue? That would serve to continue to reduce fuel consumption which would be a good thing.
1 to 2 cents per mile actually sounds quite reasonable and a good idea.
That's only $20 or $40 bucks for a 2000 mile trip.
It would serve as a dampening effect for the excessive driving we embrace in the states. Sure gas already costs, but the knowledge that each mile is ticking away money would, I think, be more directly noticeable.
Bonus points would be the funds from this going to transportation projects that provide good alternatives to driving: light rail, good bus network, etc. Then we'd be getting both incentive and alternative at once.
What ever happened to good ol toll roads? If you use the hwy it gets taken care of, if you dont, then by by.
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
This idea is a complete joke. Who would seriously allow the government to be attatched to their car? Onstar probably already lets the NSA have what ever access they want.
Also how would anyone know what exactly is being sent? You would think tracking credit cards, cell phones, laptops, social sites, and digital television would be enough.
Here I was just wondering what kind of a job I'd need to have in order to need one of these: http://dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.8758 $33 for a GPS blocker/jammer seems like it'd be a lot cheaper than paying tolls.
put the what in the where?
is there a clue stick big enough to enlighten the federal government?
Where we're going we don't need roads.
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Haven't these people ever heard of an odometer? The odometer even has the advantage to governments of taxing travel in OTHER states; an Illinois driver driving to Florida would pay his mileage tax AND gas taxes in the states he drove in.
With the hare brained GPS scheme, how is Mississippi going to tax the tourist from Oregon? It's not like the states' highway tax databases are all tied together. Without gas taxes, only people with license plates from Missouri pay for Missouri's roads, no matter how much a driver from Kansas uses them.
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When I saw 1 cent per mile I cringed but then like the reasonable person I am I pulled out my trusty calculator. I own a 2007 Civic Sedan. Let's low ball and say 30ish miles to the gallon when I combine my city/highway driving. For ease of conversion I pay 30/18.5 = 1.62 cents per mile right now. Someone double check my math since I am notoriously bad at arithmetic. So 1 cent/mile would save me a decent amount of money, while 2 cents would raise my current cost. Of course who knows what the value of a penny will be and the current gas tax in 2020.
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We don't do shit to repair the roads as it is! If this was put into place we'd find a way to further screw over our highways. Some of these potholes are big enough the only way we get them filled is to hold a funeral in one.
"Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted." -Groucho Marx
I actually don't have much of a problem with pay-as-you-go roads. The roads have to be taken care of, new bridges buit, etc. I DO have a problem with the gov't potentially keeping track of where I go! How about we track based on odometer readings? Perhaps when your car goes in for inspection every year, the odometer data is sent to the DMV, which charges you along with your yearly registration? The roads have to be paid for, and it seems reasonable that the people who use them the most should pay the most. The only problem with this might arise from people choosing to drive less because of *this*, and then, where will the money come from?
With the government pushing through cap and trade, why would we replace the gas tax? The gas tax both taxes people based on distance driven and pollution generated. Now, if cars become more efficient, we might need to raise it, but from where I'm sitting it offers a nice incentive for people to drive more fuel efficient vehicles and pays for the roads.
Mix one part electrode on the antenna with one part on the ground body. Add liberal amounts of high voltage at low current. Enjoy your GPS-free vehicle.
They could just tax gasoline more. You know, the driving-related thing that they already tax. That has the side benefit of helping to cut down on pollution more than a flat per-mile tax, too.
Is anyone else interested in making bets on how long a system like this will take to be hacked? But then, it will be OK -- the politicians can crow about how much they've reduced carbon emissions, as "proved" by the large decrease in miles driven!
There's another really nice tool that has the advantage that EVERY car already has one: Odometer
So who gets the money from that?
Currently if I am driving in a state the state usually gets some percentage of the gas tax.
If you are just checking the odometer, my home state gets all the money even if I travel out of state often?
I don't like the GPS idea one bit, I'm just saying checking the odometer does not solve the problem.
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See, the people will revolt if we suddenly double or triple the gas tax, which is 18.5 cents a gallon.
But, since we're going to mandate that all cars get 35 miles per gallon, and then we charge 1 to 2 cents (and it'll be two cents, if not four by the time it gets passed), then that means we've effectively upped the gas tax to between 35 and 70 cents a gallon (or $1.40 by four cents a mile). And the great part is that, just like income tax, they won't see the per gallon increase, they just get a bill at the end of the month that they have to pay.
Way to double, triple, or more the gas tax without looking like it.
Also, by the law of unintended consequences, by removing the tax from the gas, it makes it more cost effective to buy an older, cheaper gas guzzler, than a new, expensive, hybrid car. Thanks for destroying the environment, morons.
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We are coming up with all sorts of expensive plans to try to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and reduce the consumption of foreign oil, so why are we also trying to come up with a way to reduce the incentive to get a more fuel efficient car? Instead we should be massively increasing the tax on gasoline and possibly offering a flat rebate to counteract the regressive nature of use based taxes. That way tax revenue would keep up with decreasing demand and we would actually be naturally moving the market towards our long term goals.
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Why use this as opposed to simply using the cars odometer? The govenrment better not say fraud (Setting the Odometer back, or disconecting the cable). After all how easy will it be to disconect, or better still shield or jam the attena so the signal doesn't reach the GPS unit. Simply claim you parked your car in a place where the signal couldn't reach.
So I wonder how they are planning on taxing ME even more. A Federal Internet tax maybe? How about a "work-at-home" tax for income-earners who do not commute?
Yes we can!
We fight this kind of crap every year in California. People insist that hybrid cars are screwing us out of fuel taxes and are unfairly using the road. Well if it's so unfair maybe we should quit giving them a tax credit and put that money into the road budget instead. When everyone use hybrids we should raid the fuel tax to compensate. It's pretty simple, and doesn't require the government to contract an agency to build a $500 secured GPS unit to stick in every car.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Like it or not, a direct result of higher fuel prices is a drop is demand. Regardless of your views on oil production/drilling/exploration, it seems like it would be in everyone's best interest to use less fuel.
There was once--many years ago--talk of taxing motor fuel to reduce consumption. While I never personally agreed with the proposal, the idea of removing taxes from gasoline (which would make it appear cheaper to consumers) seems like a step in the wrong direction.
I wonder who is advising the "federal commission" on the options available to them? Why on earth would they decide a massive new taxation infrastructure was the "best path forward" unless they were being advised by someone who would benefit in some way from the massive purchase of new GPS tracking equipment?
Call me a curmudgeon, but I'd really like to know...
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I work for the DoD. There are those of us that work on "black" projects that have covert everything, including travel. It would be absolutely intolerable to have a record of where a car has been, either personal or rental, for an enemy agent to exploit. If there's a meeting of folks hammering out the requirements for a new fighter jet or littoral cruiser, who goes to the meeting, where the meeting was, what time the meeting was, etc. are all way too valuable to be recorded.
No, this idea is a non-starter for National security reasons. We won't even talk about organized crime getting ahold of it in order to track likely kidnap candidates' usual movements.
I would be putting together a GPS simulator system that would overload the real GPS signal. This simulated signal would indicate that I never drive anywhere. If you could access the antenna, you could pipe this signal in directly enabling other GPS based systems to still function. I am sure that any engine running indicator signal could be spoofed as well. :)
1 cent a mile would cost me about $2.50 a week just to drive to work. That is $0.50 more than the 18cent tax. In 10 years though, that may not seem like much more. Parking is then $15 a week and at $2.60 a gallon, I would be spending $30 a week on gas. So, it would cost me $47 a week just to go to work and back. With a rising cost in parking and now more to just drive, all this means is that I will drive even less by moving closer to work or simply working from home (network infrastructure is set up for this, but it is not preferred.) Maybe I will take a bus (OMG!) I would like to know where on my motorcycle they are going to put the GPS. I already power my own and a few other trinkets, I hope they plan on supplying batteries lol.
I like the idea of a distance based tax instead of the amount of gasoline consumed. Since roadways are a major, major source of infrastructure dollars and the majority of those roads and only used by drivers. It is just the idea of having a government controlled GPS device scares me and they should think of a different implementation other than using the GPS device.
Something that might get more Americans to ride bicycles.
"Technology.....the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it." Max Firsch
That's idiotic.
Just put a tax on gasoline. Cars that use more fossil fuel and polute more will pay more. Simple.
At the moment, federal gas taxes don't even pay for the highway subsidies, much less paying for oil infrastructure and other things-- income taxes are subsidizing our roads.
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I can see the way this would go down now. Once implemented, it will only be a matter of time before someone either hacks into and steals the tracking info, or a dishonest/underpaid "billing center" employee takes it and sells it to the highest bidder.
Because of this, we'd end up with all sorts of exceptions for the elite-class (law enforcement, celebs, politicians, etc.) After all, it's ok for the .gov and some random gov contractor to know where YOU are and going at all times, but your congressman? What if someone finds out his driving patterns and assasinates him (or better yet discovers his indiscretions?)
Continuous tracking of all motor vehicles, and thereby of most citizens. Oh, well, they do that already with cell phones. It won't be abused. Sssuuurrreee it won't.
"The Chevy volt won't pay a penny of fuel tax..." - not on gasoline, but it does pay the same tax we all pay on electricity. It will also pay the VAT when, not if, that is imposed by the Obamacists. It was supposed to be freer of taxes in order to encourage transitioning to "less polluting" (again, AS IF) technology.
Can the gov't even spell "cross-purposes"?
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Side effect: it becomes cheaper to drive a gas guzzler, and more expensive to drive an economy engine:
At current gas tax rates, that trip would cost my truck somewhere around $60 in existing gas taxes.
Existing gas tax would be about $10 in a fuel-efficient car.
Small fuel-efficient cars tend to be driven by lower-income people, who will therefore be hardest hit by this as their economy cars will pay a disproportionate amount of tax, based on per mile rather than per gallon.
So -- this is a regressive tax.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Accounts Receivable Tax
Building Permit Tax
CDL License Tax
Cigarette Tax
Corporate Income Tax
Dog License Tax
Federal Income Tax
Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA)
Fishing License Tax
Food License Tax
Fue l Permit Tax
Gasoline Tax
Hunting License Tax
Inheritance Tax
Inventory Tax
IRS Interest Charges (tax on top of tax)
IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax)
Liquor Tax
Luxury Tax
Marriage License Tax
Medicare Tax
Property Tax
Real Estate Tax
Service charge taxes
Social Security Tax
Road Usage Tax (Truckers)
Sales Taxes
Recreational Vehicle Tax
School Tax
State Income Tax
State Unemployment Tax (SUTA)
Telephone Federal Excise Tax
Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Tax
Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Tax
Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax
Telephone Recurring and Non-recurring Charges Tax
Telephone State and Local Tax
Telephone Usage Charge Tax
Utility Tax
Vehicle License Registration Tax
Vehicle Sales Tax
Watercraft Registration Tax
Well Permit Tax
Workers Compensation Tax
Tax me driving (NEW!!!)
Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago... and our nation was the most prosperous in the world.
Put GPS on snowmobiles and send me a check when they trespass.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
There are a load of problems with this proposal:
1. There's already a device for tracking mileage in cars: it's called an odometer
2. GPS is good, but not immune to spoofing or erroneous readings
3. No way do I want the government to have access to tracking information or automatic uploading of data from such a system
4. Eliminate the gas tax?? Way to go: you've just eliminated one of the added incentives for reducing gas consumption!!!
I don't *want* a mile driven by someone in a big, honking SUV to cost the same in taxes/tolls as a fuel efficient car, especially because less efficient cars tend to be heavier and cause more wear on the roads anyway.
The obvious problem is that there are a LOT of places where people drive where you can't get good GPS signals (it's often impossible to pick up GPS signals in downtown areas with skyscrapers all around, for example). Do their plans include a way to magically make GPS receivers pick up signals where they currently can't?
Also, what's to stop me from simply covering my GPS in grounded foil or something?
First, Big Brother, privacy, tracking, etc. I agree that it's horrible for all those reasons.
Second, it's a load of crap. Fuel consumption is roughly inversely proportional to weight, so on average, less fuel consumption means lighter vehicles. Lighter vehicles means far less road damage. I've heard (but not verified) that damage is proportional to weight to the 4th power, so if one vehicle weighs 20% less than another, it'll cause about 40% of the damage. That makes at least intuitive sense, as at some point damage drops off to effectively zero. How many bike riders would it take to destroy a highway as much as a single semi truck?
Isn't that a good thing? Except for new road building and repairs due to weather, I'd think that maintenance would drop dramatically as vehicles get lighter, and would in fact drop faster than the revenue from fuel tax.
BTW, remember yesterday's story about Amazon cutting off affiliates in Rhode Island, and people claiming that the fuel taxes paid by UPS and FedEx weren't used for road maintenance? Yeah.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
if everyone drove electric cars the gov't wouldn't get any money from a gas tax...
so they plan on taxing you by how much you drive.
collecting this tax is going to be expensive however.
putting a gps in every car and monitoring it isn't going to be cheap.
This concept stinks like crude oil. Probably because it's heavily supported by the oil industry.
A 'miles driven' tax is exactly the kind of problem that allows people to completely externalize a lot of the public the cost of their fuel-inefficient vehicles (pollution, dependence on foreign oil, etc). We need to force people to pay those costs, in order to provide a disincentive to buying inefficient vehicles.
If we're going to switch to a miles-driven tax instead of a gas tax, then let's put a surchage tax on the purchase of inefficient vehicles. Let's make it $100 per rated mpg under 50.
Here's the math:
Say a pickup truck gets 20 mpg (generous), and will be driven for only 100,000 miles over its life. That's 5,000 gallons of fuel -- at federal excise rate of 18.4 cents/gal, that's $920 in gas taxes over the life of the vehicle.
Now look at a truck that gets 15 mpg. Fuel taxes over the life of the vehicle are $1380 (again, assuming only 100k miles driven).
A miles-driven tax, where both trucks pay the same amount, completely removes a big incentive to purchasing a fuel-efficient vehicle. And given that the low mpg rating is typical of heavier vehicles that cause more road wear-and-tear, it's only fair that they pay higher taxes.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Those crazy US politicians are so slow with this sort of privacy infringing legislation, they need to get their act together and get into the big leagues like the UK politicians who proposed essentially this idea on or before 6th June 2005 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4610755.stm). The people weren't over the moon at the idea so instead the government have supported building a nationwide ANPR (automatic number plate recognition) system which is pretty much the same end result. What's really great is they are now talking about hooking up all the CCTV cameras in the street to facial recognition systems so they can track pedestrians too. I'm sure we'll get the sat nav system first though - eroding privacy and passing dumb legislation seems to be the only thing we're good at any more.
The stupid thing is that I think if this system could be put together in such a way that it wasn't the worlds biggest privacy problem it could be quite useful. For a start it would map all the drivable roads in the country. Every car could / would have sat nav and it could be used to route around road network problems. Road network designers would love the anonymous data on traffic loads and common paths and I'm sure people would find stacks of other good uses for this data.
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There is no way in hell that the government will remove any gas taxes, they will just add the per mile tax.
A gas tax has the advantage of taxing pollution, but the americans seem to enjoy polluting, so they will penalize instead those who don't pollute.
Never mind that a gas tax is easier to collect than having to read the data from a zillion vehicles and compile bills and mail them and collect them!!!
I thought that O'Bama was not an oil industry shill???
It's the belief that they should be tracking mileage in the first place.
One of the major advantages of taxing gasoline instead of taxing miles its that it rewards people who have better gas mileage.
If we just want to raise more cash, raise the general income or sales tax.
If we just want to charge car owners to maintain the highways, use tollbooths and also put in higher registration fees.
But the reason we put in a tax on gas was to charge MORE to people that use more GAS. The idea is to thereby encourage people, financially, to use less gas.
This is a blatant attempt to get rid of one of the best ideas we have ever had - to tax GASOLINE because it's use is bad for the environment and it is a limited commodity.
Anyone that supports using a mileage tax by itself is an evil, vile person, and it should not be surprised that they would try the most evil method of all, trackign everyone everywhere they went via GPS.
If we are not getting enough money from the gas tax then raise the gas tax.
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I suppose they're going to make us pay for these specialized GPS receivers out of our own pockets? Require professional installation? What about my motorcycle, are they going to insist I fuck that up by putting their piece of crap on it too? Fuck this bullshit. Won't vote for it, and if they try to jam it down our throats, I won't co-operate with it either. For fuck's sake, just increase the damned gasoline tax instead you idiots! NOBODY is going to go for this except the damned politicians and the bastards who want a police state!
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Why not just tax fuel more? If fuel use is going down and more tax money is needed, why not just increase the fuel tax? Such a system would be many times more efficient, and doesn't require sticking GPS and net access into every car.
If they're worried about electric cars, simply taxing more on electricity would work, you know? Same with any other alternate fuels
EZ-Pass already knows every time I get onto a toll road & every time I get off. No GPS tracking, just a simple clock-in/clock out.
What really pisses me off about it is that my NY tolls don't just pay for my NY toll roads, they are also the primary revenue stream which pays for the canal system (the NY canal system is owned by the NY Thruway Authority).
The NYS Thruway was actually paid off over 15 years ago (the tolls were meant to cover the cost of construction), and was supposed to become free after that - instead, they're paying for maintenance and a totally unrelated line of "business".
Consuming more gasoline means more taxes paid. Can we please elect Ron Paul, already, so efforts like these get quashed?
at 26 mpg (what i get) at 18.5 cents a gallon it means that you spend 71.115 cents per 100 miles.
If its a 1 cent a mile then you spend 1 dollar per mile (100 cents)
If its 2 cent a mile you spend 2 dollars per mile.
Which means that for a car at 26 MPG the current system is almost 42% more tax burden at 1 cent tax and 280 % at 2 cents?
Why, other than the privacy concerns, would America want this if it was completely benign (and they never used it to watch you).
If you don't vote, you don't matter, so don't waste your time telling me your opinion
increase the road tax for gasoline. This is a tax already implemented that require no new technology and does not track my movements. Or yearly national vehicle tax that is based on vehicle weight (either full load or empty). There are an infinite number of ways to collect the money necessary to facilitate the growth of the gov't I mean maintain our public roads that do not include tracking my whereabouts.
insert inflammatory comment here!
How is it that 1 or 2 cents per mile will cover the current fuel taxes? Simple math: Let's take the average: 1.5 cents per mile. My car does 26 miles a gallon on average, so that's 39 cents a gallon, compared to the current 18.5 cents per gallon, that's a nice 110% tax increase. I like how the government sneaks in additional taxes as a new way of collecting existing taxes! Just my 0.02 cents per mile.
Most states collect odometer date during emission tests, so they already [could] have this data.
I cannot understand why they cannot test this with truck drivers first to work out the bugs. They already pay fuel taxes and registration fees based on how many miles they drive in each state so it would be logical to let the device keep track of the mileage rather than the driver.
Can't wait to see if the guv-mint can contract someone to write tax software that tallies up any better than what they spent billions on for elections.
At least for the next decade or so increasing the existing gas tax would still get the job done. After that a one time road fee at the time of purchase, or yearly road fee as part of your registration would simply make more sense.
We need fewer taxes, not more. I'm fine with those taxes being adjusted as needed, but stop nickel and diming me dozens of different ways...
"One estimate of a road tax that would cover the current federal and state fuel taxes is 1 to 2 cents per mile for cars and light trucks."
*IF* they do this, and there are good reasons why they shouldn't, the tax should be scaled for the mass (road wear) and fuel efficiency of the vehicle, otherwise you've eliminated the incentive for fuel efficiency. Same tax for less efficient and heavier vehicles (read: "light trucks / SUVs") makes no sense.
HAH! And you thought modchips were just for running *legal* backups of your own games...think again!
At least geeks will have a steady income installing them once every new car has this.
At least where I live. Only the Atlanta/metro area require emissions checking. Not required in the relatively small city I live in.
What about when a car is towed, or ferried, or moved some other way which gas isn't used?
How about driving through tunnels where you can get a GPS signal? I say we build our own underground road network!
Just take half of my paycheck every week and my ex can take the rest :)
I like how it takes into account solar flares that knock out GPS reception, and signal reflection in the city that causes location jumps, and non-public roads that shouldn't be taxed, and size and weight of the car as related to the actual effect the car has on the roads, and, and, and....
Considering how easy it is to mess with a GPS receiver, I wonder how many of them will suffer from "reception issues".
Also, what will the government do about all those long drives in non-reception areas, like all those mountains we have here in Oregon.
FTFA:
And the bonus "the police need to know what cars were near [crime-scene] at [time around which crime was committed].
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Just have your license-plate-renewal or inspection-sticker guy write down the milage and certify it as accurate under penalty of perjury, then pay the tax annually as part of your inspection or license plate renewal fee.
Of course, this will open up a whole new market for odometer fraud.
Tracking is just too big-brother for me. I'd rather walk.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
So, there's the fuel tax (which they say will go away, but probably won't). Then there's this shiny new mileage tax. Then there's the tax that's not called a tax (because some idiot politician promised not to raise taxes) -- toll roads.
Just %()*#$%(# raise income tax 0.5% and get rid of all this other waste of time, waste of money crap! Americans would be better off in the end because 100% of the money could go to roads instead of half of it going to the enormous overhead of building toll roads compared to regular roads (and don't forget all the cash that's going to foreign operators of the toll roads) and installing devices in every car to track and upload all this mileage data (oh, and don't forget all the infrastructure and people required to run the "billing center").
Why not use odometer? It can be tampered with, but same goes for GPS. It probably won't be to hard to disconnect or jamm.
You can easily google something...
http://www.ladyada.net/make/wavebubble/
http://www.navigadget.com/index.php/2007/01/29/homemade-gps-jammer
I know with GPS they can make difference in tax based on roads driven, but they don't do this now and it is not big deal.
What worries me more is that they'll know where I was, when I was there and everyhing else. Who will control that information?
The government does not hold a monopoly on every driving surface on earth. What about private driveways? Unpaved roads? Tunnels? Moreover, why GPS? You can get the same system with a publicly displayed odometer.
If this is ever mandated to be in a vehicle, I'll be wrapping that little bundle of joy in aluminum foil.
But WHY? What on earth do they aim to achieve? I am honestly baffled by this.
Apart from not being convinced that fuel usage is actually going down per kilometer (maybe it is in the US, but it certainly isn't in Australia, where we liked bigger cars up until last year), if you are getting less income through fuel tax, increase the tax. Since they are presumably wanting to
1) earn tax revenues
2) perhaps, if they're really enlightened, discourage CO2 emission
both of those can be achieved by increasing the tax rate on the fuel (km is only a loose proxy for CO2 emission, whereas fuel usage is directly proportional to CO2 emission and *very easily measured* and *already taken care of, dammit*, and not a flat rate charge that discourages people from driving lighter more fuel efficient vehicles.
"The Chevrolet Volt won't pay a penny of fuel tax," Rahn said of the electric car that will make its debut next year.
Yeah, but it will pay a carbon tax if the car is charged up from a typical power source. Which, in a sensible world, would actually be a non-negligible amount of money.
"If you're committed to the system being improved then it was a no-brainer," he said.
Clearly. The stupidity. It hurts!
My kneejerk reaction was that this was a bad idea... then I did the maths. Say you drive 20,000 miles yearly. That would be $200 in taxes at $0.01 per mile. Say you get 20 MPG average (highway and city), that's currently $185 you're paying in gas tax. Assuming you get some kind of compensation for having GPS in your car (I use a pad of paper for my directions) then it's actually worth it. I live near the Atlanta area, most of the interstates around here SUUUUUUUCCCCKKKK for quality, but GA 400 is toll road, and it's the best driving surface around. My proposition is to use current funds for all highways and surface streets and make the interstates toll roads. Assuming of course that there would be a way to discourage heavy transportation vehicles on highways.
What it could be used for though, would be in investigations and criminal cases where the state might be interested. For example, we could have figured out Sanford was having an affair much sooner if we'd had GPS tracking on him all the time. And you know it's only a matter of time before law enforcement starts watching the GPS data for patterns and flagging any deviation from daily patterns as suspicious and worthy of investigation.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I have a Honda CRX, it gets 40-50 MPG. So instead of paying 18 cents per 50 miles, I'm now paying 50-100 cents per 50 miles. Even my Nissan NX 2000 gets 35mpg, doubling the amount of tax I pay per gallon of gas. This is only revenue neutral if your vehicle gets 18mpg. People with more fuel efficient vehicles are paying a larger tax with this plan.
Screw that.
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Here's an idea: if the gas tax isn't covering the cost of maintaining roads, increase the gas tax! Yes, I know that's a political third rail in the USA, but I have a feeling Americans would be more receptive to a higher gas tax than to having a GPS tracker installed in their vehicle.
For congestion charging, just use drive-by toll booths, already in widespread use [EZPass, SunPass, etc].
Of course, we ARE talking about a population that, right after 9/11, were willing to scrap the Constitution in the name of "national security". I hope the "nothing to hide" crowd doesn't willingly accept these GPS trackers because they're "better than a higher gas tax".
I'll just pull a Ferris Bueller and drive everywhere in reverse! They'll owe me money every year! Ha!
I HAVE CUBIC WISDOM THAT TRANSCENDS AND CONTRADICTS ONE DAY GODS
1) Disconnnect antenna from tracker.
2) Feed computer generated NMEA packets to tracking device.
3) "Yes sir, if my GPS says I drove the Indy 500 and came in second place, I must have."
4) Profit!
Fuck that bullshit. Seriously. This flat-out penalizes people who drive cars that get good mileage. Just add to the gas tax. That's incentive to either drive fewer miles or get better mpg, both of which are good things.
FTFA: "'The Chevrolet Volt won't pay a penny of fuel tax,' Rahn said of the electric car that will make its debut next year".
Last time I checked, hybrids still had an ICE in them
It is called OnStar .. why do you think I pull out the fuse when I buy a new GM vehicle.
On that point I could understand why a GPS might be asked for
as opposed to a simple odometer read by the car inspector.
But one of the biggest arguments against income tax is "Do you like driving on roads?" With a GPS driving tax how this argument is no longer valid. What are we going to do?!
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OK, maybe I am wrong, but I doubt that the government would be able to create the software to gather and use the information. It took them 50 years to get tax records onto a computer and that is just one set per person per year. How would they handle dozens of transactions per car per year. My bet would be they spend more to create and manage the system than they get in additional revenue. I live in a state where there are no toll roads and people pay for the roads through gas tax. Works great IMHO. Would not want to see the guy with the 8,000 pound SUV paying the same rate per mile that I pay with my tiny grocery getter.
Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid government! If the policy is to have a fuel tax, and the take is going down, then increase the damned fuel tax! Don't remove the inherent progressivity of the fuel tax by treating 3 ton 8 mpg monstrosities the same as my 1.5 ton 48 mpg car. Big monstrosities use more fuel, create far more road wear, and require bigger parking spaces than my car. Why penalize me for doing what my masters want me to do?
Yeah but so what? They can set their state tax to whatever they want, and set up whatever revenue sharing deals with other states that they want.
How? They have only odometer readings. Why should they share anything with other states. Tons of people drive from Colorado to Wyoming but I really doubt Colorado is going to share a lot with Wyoming.
The very fact you say "set the state tax to whatever they want" shows you have not thought through the problem. WHAT TAX? The whole point is that cars are getting more efficient while using less gas - in the case of electric, no gas. They still cause the same wear to roads. In fact local surface streets face a lot more wear issues than highways, and tourists from out of state can cause a lot of that depending on the area. Your way of thinking totally pummels popular tourist destinations with an unfair amount of extra wear they are not getting any money for.
It's a tricky problem, and the odometer alone simply cannot provide the data needed to distribute funds properly.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Why not just increase the tax on gasoline? Its benefits are twofold, it pushes consumers towards more efficient vehicles, and it is a consumption tax without the difficulty of implementing a nationwide GPS system.
Traffic counters at the border and a little math before distribution does, though.
Look at a map of any two states sometime. Look at all the lines between them...
Just how practical is a border crossing between every state? Do you have any idea what this would do to highway travel? Do you know how much this would cost?
Not to mention if we started to have to stop at border stations to travel out of every state, people would be up in arms. Literally.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What happens when people then start to drive less? What will get taxed then?
That comes from the same place that the promise that cable will be commercial-free, the new coke will be the drink of the future, and that pigs can fly did.
Aside from the privacy issues, this strikes me as a foolish waste of resources. How many millions of dollars will be spent to install GPS units and to track and bill every driver? The money could be raised just as easily from a flat fuel tax, a system which is already in place with little overhead.
If more fuel efficient cars pay less tax, that simply encourages efficient cars, which is great. If electric cars get out of paying road tax, consider that a subsidy to encourage adoption of electric cars. If electric cars eventually become commonplace, then use electricity taxes for the roads.
The pattern I cut the grass with once they put the GPS on my lawn tractor!
46. The Hobo smiles, his eyes glaze over, and he burps. "Beware the man who has lived longer than the Wasteland."
The government already subsidizes most forms of public transportation if more people would use it... But it also has to be more available and more easily accessible as it is in Europe.
And I could build a portable gyzmo to do just that.
Of course it'd be illegal in many states (as radar detectors already are), but there must be some way around that.
It'd fsck yer [GPS] navigation, but who needs navigation if it's gonna be taxed?
Exceeding the recommended torque is not recommended.
Sooner or later all motor vehicle travel is going to be subject to government tracking via technology. Automated traffic light and speeding cameras should be evidence enough of that.
Using that technology to tax road usage, especially if it's proportionate to the amount of wear a vehicle causes to the road (I'd be willing to bet that the higher gas tax a Semi driver pays does not account for the extra wear he causes compared to my Civic), is a positive use of that technology - it will encourage people to use more efficient cars, maybe even to carpool.
Using that technology to track locations and drivers is also a good thing, provided that information is properly protected by law. Rather than fighting a natural extension of technology, let's start working on figuring out what the proper legal protections are, and making sure those are included when this tech is deployed.
Anonymous because no good deed goes unpunished;
We have about 5000 tractors/power units/large trucks/18 wheelers -- whatever you want to call them.
Our fuel tax for these type of vehicles are already partially based off of miles pulled through GPS.
I spent about a year writing software that takes GPS data sent in over satellites in real time, collected about every 15 minutes, sending it to a highway/streets mileage calculator (PCMiler, RandMcNally, those types) and calculating our fuel tax. I feel we have the most accurate reporting of any fleet, and state audits have proven this.
That said, here is what you need to think about;
What about gasoline that is not used in an automobile? If it's not taxed at the pump, how do you tax mowers, ATV's, generators? Granted, this is a highway tax. But these are currently being taxed and you rarely see the government dropping a tax. Right now we calculate diesel used in the various generators on trucks such as the refrigeration unit out, and file for a refund with the federal government and the states.
What about GPS failures? We often see our GPS units miscalculate a point and put the unit 5000 miles away in the middle of the ocean. Sometimes it's just off by 50 miles. Sanity checks are partially why it took so long to write the software I wrote.
Off road use. Legally, we shouldn't pay the highway use tax on local street use. This is very difficult to calculate, as the roads are changing every day. PCMiler and RandMcNally streets products have to make best guesses as to what road you are on, and it's not always right. Are you on a toll road which has no road tax, or are you on the outer road, or the highway next to the outer road which does have road tax? Moving 60MPH, GPS drift and changes in roads make this very difficult to be accurate 100% of the time.
What about accidents, when the GPS is damaged or damage is not noticed?
What about when a car is toed? Sometimes our units have to be toed hundreds of miles. Legally, the toe truck is responsible.
What about ferries? Michigan has a ferry which travels across lake Michigan a long ways. This should movement should not be taxes.
What about trains? Sometimes we place our units on trains. Not sure if that is common with cars.
Anyway, we are doing this now with our units. It's doable. Our accuracy is a lot higher than the old paper trip method. I just hope they make the tax amount a federal standard. It sucks having to support different tax rates and structures in different states and figuring out what state to buy in. Go IFTA.
HOPE... AND... CHAAAANGE!!!!!!!!
filter error don't use so many caps it's like yelling
They already make you get emissions when you pay your ad valorem tax in most states, why not just record the millage then and add the "road" tax to the ad valorem tax each year. ?
Who is going to make sure I have a GPS in it when I drive it?
Oh, and it gets 8-9 MPG.
I've always wondered why insurance companies don't require odometer readings to be submitted when renewing the insurance... Rates IMO should be based on usage, not time. Drive lots of miles? Pay more overall. Drive safely, pay less per mile. The mileage could be tied to registration and the suggested road tax collected.
I hate new taxes, but the reality is 'someone has to pay the piper'. In my fantasy world, governments would abolish the fuel tax(es) and replace them with this road tax which would be function of miles driven, weight of vehicle and things like trailer hitches.
(Posting anonymously because my new Ubuntu installation doesn't seem to want to follow the Login link on /.)
Seriously, how does this, or any, taxation come close to paying to launch multi-million dollar GPS satellites? If we chose to do this before GPS already existed, then it no one would have supported it!
The issue is how to fairly collect taxes to pay for maintenance of roads and highways. How do we make those who use public roads and highways the most pay the most for their maintenance? Using GPS data to determine this is a poor solution. An good solution is to build the increased cost of road maintenance into a tax for new tires sold for on road use in the United States.
Revenue, the environment, foreign oil and hybrids have nothing to do with this. This has to do, plain and simple, with keeping track of people. Of course, the naysayers will be asked the age old question, "Well, if you haven't got anything to hide..." How anyone with an organ RESEMBLING a brain can make that argument is beyond me.
This is about knowing where you go and what you do.
Here's an idea, instead of trying to figure out how to offset the loss in gas taxes by finding new taxes how about you fat fucking greedy pieces of dog shit in DC stop filling every motherfucking bill passed, from those on military issues to cutting emissions, with pork that just oozes from every single crevice.
"With my taxes I pay for civilization." No. You don't. You pay for corrupt people with the most flexible sorts of morality on the planet to figure out ways to steal even more money from you.
What the fuck is wrong with this country? Every couple years I think, "Well, it has to rebound at some point." Apparently not.
GPS doesn't just say "how far", as is proposed, but as suggested, it can also say "where" (and when). Aside from the privacy issues of "where have you been", it is just the next step to charging different rates depending on when you use the roads, or which roads you use.
Like lots of taxes it is not because they really want you to drive less, they just want more control over you and more of your money.
Look for a gps device lobbyist in here somewhere. Also toss in some lawyers/insurance companies, who will be able to access your data to use against you, in case you happen to speed, etc.
(Besides, is gas use really going down? I though more and more got used every year.)
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Why not just continue to raise the fuel taxes to generate revenue? That would serve to continue to reduce fuel consumption which would be a good thing.
I'm afraid that would make too much sense.
It taxes by the mile but penalizes cars with poor mileage more. It doesn't have any privacy concerns. It's easy to implement. It's called the gas tax.
Revenues are falling because people buy/use less gas. (debatable, but let's just say...)
Roadway maintenance and other costs are going up.
Fine. Raise the gas tax to the point where revenue is adequate. Econo-car drivers still get a break, gas-hog drivers don't. So what's the problem?
I'd just move the GPS to my bike and wire it up to a spare car battery. Then I'd have a good excuse not to work out ("But honey, if I go for a ride, it'll cost us...") AND I'd save money in taxes.
Ack!
If these geniuses think it is a 'no-brainer' that you can get political support for a government-mandated tracking device being planted in every American's car, they have been sniffing the bunsen burner for way, way too long.
Why do we need a device to do this?
Everytime you get your car inspected, they record the mileage.
Mileage from current year - mileage from previous year = tax.
It is either that or my home made faraday cage around the GPS.
Mileage isn't good way to generate tax revenue. In your average medium sized town you could drive 15 miles to work and do it in 20 minutes. Now take LA, Chicago, New York, or any other large city and it takes more than 20 minutes to drive a lot less than 15 miles. Stop and go traffic and idling still consumes gas. It would be unfair to the individual at the very least to tax some poor guy in Montana $0.60 a day and the other guy in LA only $0.10 for their daily commute. It would probably be more difficult to anticipate revenue for both since there isn't nearly as much data on average commute distances as there is for average gasoline consumption in a given area. Finally you would have less of an incentive to drive a more fuel efficient car which would drive down efficient car sales and in turn slow down development of such cars.
Capitalism is here and you Americans better get with the idea that all those privacy laws you have will eventually count in your "HOME" only. Once you leave your front door or connect to an outside line be prepared to pay and be seen.
Change you can believe in!
Oh... Wait....
Road wear-and-tear is the fourth power of vehicle mass.
Fuel usage is roughly correlated with vehicle mass. It isn't perfect, but heavy cars tend to use more fuel.
So they are starting with the fuel usage tax (roughly correlated with first power of vehicle mass). If you really want to tax people for the damage they cause for roads, they should move towards a *greater* dependence on vehicle mass (towards fourth power). Instead, they are moving in precisely the opposite direction.
This proposed change simply isn't rationale.
They told me that if I voted for McCain the government would end up tracking my every move. And they were right!
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
How about some good old fashioned tollbooths?
They will tax the money when you make it. When you buy a car. There will be property tax on that car and other taxes on maintenance stuff. Then there will be a tax on driving the car and most likely sales tax still on the fuel.
How many times does the government need to tax us?
For cars that get that get less than 18 mpg if the tax is 1 cent this will less expensive (only based on tax not price of fuel) for cars that get more it will be more expensive. For cars that get 36 mpg or above and the tax being at 1 cent per mile, the cost will double.
If the tax is 2 cents, then for cars that get less than 9 mpg, it will be less expensive. For cars that get 18 mpg it will be twice as expensive. For cars that get 36 mpg it will be four times as expensive.
So if you own a car that get 36 mpg (priuses and other hybrids get considerably more) then you will pay roughly 74 cents tax on a gallon of gas. If the mileage tax is 2 cents per mile.
I dont know about everyone else but this is out of line. Doubling or quadrupling taxes on vehicles which are better for the environment will only hinder their uptake as well as hurt our wallets.
This must be fought.
..for others, a lot of off the public road driving occurs. I've driven my truck six times in the past three days, all of it is on private property, and this farm at 800 acres is tiny compared to some ranches out west or for guys who go deep into the forests for logging, etc. They'll rack up tank after tank of fuel and hardly go on a publicly maintained road.
Anyway, IMO, this is more about people tracking then revenue. The gas tax is supposed to be wear and tear related for road maintenance, and for that it works. We have less revenue from better mileage cars, and also folks just driving less, and one of the reasons there is that they are lighter, and thus, less maintenance is required, less wear and tear. Want an alternative for this? Ban commodities flipping, it's just as harmful and stupid as real erstate bubble building flipping, make the end user who buys this oil on contract actually take delivery of petroleum and *do something* with it, like finish refining it and so on. A stat I read recently (sorry, no link handy) said a barrel of oil changes hands on average 27 times on paper before delivery! If we banned that speculation flipping and middleman skimming and price gouging, we could have a larger fuel tax by the gallon at the pump, they'd get all the road maintenance revenue they would need, and it would still be cheaper at the pump for the end user.
This GPS tracking you nonsense is more big brother action, and obviously so if you stop and look at the larger picture, same as all the other tagging, rfid, tracking, cameras, database crap they are instituting. This is the new technofuedalist elite aristocrats maintaining their herds of subjects/serfs. Really, just extrapolate it out. It is SO far beyond what was considered harmful/heinous back when I was a kid it ain't funny now. From my POV as a neogeezer we are well past the halfway point to the brave new world, well past it. They are already doing stuff I was taught was only done in dire dictatorial regimes, no knock raids and door kicking, random checkpoints, secret enemies of the state lists, etc.
Now look forward just twenty more years if this keeps up at this rate. They'll have an entire generation well into adulthood with kids of their own who have never ever been in a situation where they weren't monitored, had to go through random checkpoints, been scanned, tagged, DNA registered, fingerprinted, stamped, spindled folded and mutilated by the state, all of the above and more, everything about them cataloged in databases, and they will consider that "normal". Poof, a full master/slave society when the slaves don't even see they are slaves, and if pointed out to them will deny it because of the mass conditioning since birth. The chains will be invisible to them, they will love big brother. It's damn close now, the poor kids in the public schools today are undergoing mass indoctrination and cultural brainwashing to an extreme.
If they tried to pull this stuff all at once, they might see an actual righteous revolt, a little bit at a time, spread out over the years..nothing, they win. And the whole time it is happening, apologists will keep saying it isn't that bad, every single step forward to that sort of society "well, it isn't that bad, look at north korea!!'.
That's how they get away with it. Look at the acceptance of the "no fly" enemies of the state list now. Like supposedly a million people and counting. No public accusation in the normal courts system, just you find out you are on some list if you go to board a plane..because some faceless drone decided you should be on it, or a computer program did it..or something. And they get cut out of the line, and everyone around them looks away and is thankful it isn't them...Scared into docile obedience, state sponsored terrorized into acceptance. They won't even say how it works. I mean, how bad does it have to get before people really notice this stuff? Does anyone REALLY think there are a million "terrorists" inside the US? Where are the attacks? If there really are, where are the arrests and charges and trials? Nope, that's the misdirection, this is just a list for eventual herd culling. Tracking you in your ride is all that is about, the revenue stuff is BS.
Ok, so to re-state the obvious... it's a GPS and a cellular modem... so that's a monthly fee to someone, unless they set aside some government bandwidth, and a huge network of radios, to receive these monthly reports. They would need this, because, if the receivers were short range and small in number, they would shortly be available on maps for your navigation GPS, just like traffic cameras.
But that's not even thinking creatively.. have these guys ever actually used a GPS? Sure, they're pretty good at pulling in those -100dBm GPS signals these days, but that wouldn't be the case when everyone's buying little 1mW 1575.42 MHz/1227.6 MHz jammers to totally block the GPS.
They also seem to know nothing about the Chevy Volt... it's a series plug-in hybrid. After about 40 miles (which is probably more like 30miles with the AC or heat on) the engine kicks in... they will use petrol. And not only that, but as we're trying to move to greener technology, we ought to be increasing taxes on those who aren't following.
This should be done like local property taxes. The tax assessor rates your home price in dollars, but it might as well just be gold-pressed latinum, the numbers are meaningless. It's only the relative value of your property vs. your neighbors. They add up all the value, figure out what they need in tax, and do a little math to calculate the "tax per dollar".
Similarly, they ought to float the gasoline/diesel taxes based on the total consumption vs. the total cash they expect to bring in... at least as long as gasoline remains a significant fuel (and obviously, different taxes may be applied, to electric power, ethanol, H2, whatever, based on Uncle Sam's desire to see that fuel replace dino-juice). That way, over time, those clinging to the past will find it more expensive to do so... which is precisely the effect we should want.
-Dave Haynie
The GPS satellites are run by the U.S. Air Force, and the first generation satellies are close to their design end of life. The program to replace them is currently running three years behind schedule and $870 million over budget.
In view of this potential problem, combined with the current economic situation, is it reasonable to expect the system to still be running reliably in 2020?
Currently, the fed tax on fuel is $0.18 (according to the link). Making the tax $.01 to $.02 cents a mile, and assuming that a car can get anywhere from 18 to 45 mpg, this makes the tax range effectively $0.18 to $.90 per gallon!
A few interesting points here:
1) Less fuel efficient cars will be less tax per gallon of gas consumed.
2) I thought there would be no new taxes on folks making less that $250,000 a year!
3) What will the states do to jump on this hidden tax inrease bandwagon?
You need a warrant if you're going to bug MY property.
Try this and you'll have privacy advocates from the left and anti-government advocates from the right forming powerful coalitions to block it.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Time to dust off the old bike.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
When I got insurance for my car, the form asked for an estimate of how many miles I expected to drive in a year. At the bottom, it said normal drivers average about 12,000 miles per year. While I thought that number seemed a little low, I'll use that here. 1 to 2 cents per mile, for 12,000 miles, is $120-$240 per year. Compared to the system we have now: 12,000 miles/22 mpg* = 545 gallons. According to this site: http://www.factsonfuel.org/images/pdf/Gasoline_Taxes_Map_Jan-2009.pdf, I have to pay 38.4 cents per gallon of fuel for tax in Texas. That is $209. If I drive 15,000 miles per year, which I think is a better estimate, then the road tax would be $150-$300, while the gas tax would be $261. Of course, these numbers would change depending on your own tax rates, fuel efficiency, and driving habits. But for me, it looks like the road tax is somewhat in the range of the gas tax, especially if the rate ends up being closer to 1 penny per gallon instead of 2. *The average fuel efficiency of my car.
"Should we allow citizens be tracked in real time, just for the collection of taxes?"
Politicians talk at a rate exceeding a mile-a-minute. I think this warrants a tax, especially when you consider the emissions. Can we GPS their lips?!
taxing gasoline does the same thing philosophically as implanting cars with GPS units and taxing the miles people drive.... you are taxed based on consumption & use. the only real difference w/GPS is you could localize investments to specific roads that people drive on but honestly, that's a waste of time.
on top of this, the natural incentives that play into helping people into fuel efficient vehicles is lost.
this idea is a waste of money to even think about.
If tax applies only to cars and trucks, then let's ride motorcycles. It is fun and fuel efficient. Many motorcycles come with heated grips, ABS and other stuff that makes two-wheel travel more civilized and if it can help me to avoid taxes that's great. Plus brand new motorcycles are way cheaper than brand new cars. You can have a nice top of the line touring BMW bike for under $20K OTD. How much does the entry level 3 series cost?
The alternative is to stick with older cars unless gov't decides to put a GPS in every vehicle on the road. Even then I'll start bicycling or walking.
Really I'd like to know:
1. Who came up with this idea?
2. Who wrote the first article to say. Yep let's do this!
3. Who were the first people to sign on and support it?
I notice that all of a sudden dumb ideas like this show up and become "inevitable". It's like it just fell out of the sky as the divine pre-ordained inevitable plan of "the government" but it had to have started somewhere.
Where the government tracks your every movement. What bullshit. Of course, GPS is very easily blocked or washed out. This means that they will also have to notice when your car's odometer changes without the GPS appearing to move. Which can only mean one thing: The 10-4 FU form on your tax return, comparing odometer movement to GPS logs.
How about our government just figure out how to balance their damned budget with the money they have coming in? Or is that to bloody easy?
Lots and lots and lots of toll roads here. Not as bad as the NE part of the country, but around here "most" people having an EZ Tag is an exaggeration but not a ridiculous one.
They use less fuel. With the mandate for more fuel efficient vehicles, the level of consumption will decrease as will the revenue from a gas tax.. With the per mile tax it allows them to get revenue from any vehicle including a 100% solar powered vehicle. As usual it's just big government trying to cover all the bases and ensure that there are no loop holes the average Joe can use to save a buck.
So how long after will it be before they start requiring the GPS's on bicycles or even worse on each and every one of us?
I am going to get a horse. Then what? They can shove the GPS up its ass!
Am I the only person that this worries?
The government's ability to track me is a violation of privacy laws and is therefore unconstitutional. Of course, that has never stopped the idiots in Washington from doing things in the past. Oh well.
How can one challenge the accuracy or flaws in the record generated by the GPS receiver in your car? GPS's suffer all kinds of issues in cities like New York with signal bounce, etc., which result in flawed positions. Who reviews the accuracy of the data, or are you just SOL?
I can just see the fun government tax forms you'd have to fill out to get a refund for GPS errors that resulted in mileage errors over the course of a year. Not to mention, what if you're a farmer who drives only on private roads not maintained by county/state/fed? What if you're private road parallels a major highway and the GPS incorrectly thinks you're driving on the highway and hence taxes you? There are dozens of issues this convoluted system will generate for the consumer/citizen/sheeple.
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
I don't suppose that the federal and state governments would also be willing to rescind gas taxes as well? If we are going to be charged "usage" taxes, which currently are in the form of gasoline taxes, then I suppose it would be asking too much that gasoline taxes be reduced significantly, or rescinded altogether? One thing I know, that if you aren't in the 2% richest category, your taxes almost never go down...
Why not just put a meter on electric car chargers?
Are you kidding me? I have to travel upwards of 100+ miles to get *anywhere* worthwhile here, and even then it's only worthwhile by dint of being compared to middle 'o nowhere Arkansas - what the hell is this supposed to accomplish, aside from keeping me tethered to failure?
There's literally no alternative to driving here - public transportation does not exist beyond school buses and bikes aren't useful over 40+ miles.
There will be a fuel + GPS Mileage tax. No bureaucrat will give up that revenue source no matter how small it is. BTW, I don't own an aluminum foil hat but I am not even comfortable with this. I fully recognize the government could conduct surveillance and track my whereabouts today. However, today its HARD to do so. Things like warrants and satellites and patching into the cellular phone system to triangulate must be done. While there are procedures to do so, I like the fact that its HARD and not easy. Having a repository of easily viewed and mined locational data is not my idea of a good time.
GPS Mileage tax = FAIL
Sorry, I get annoyed when we the stupid elect the Inept.
Your tax dollars, being thrown away for no good reason.
I say we boycott money. We can get along without it.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
First let us define the problem:
Electric vehicles do not use gasoline and therefore are not taxed to pay for road maintenance. More fuel efficient vehicles pay less tax.
So now that the problem is defined here are a few non-intrusive solutions that don't involve new technology:
1. One time tax at the time of purchase. The average car lifespan is somewhere around 100,000 miles. Compute what the expected tax should be and add it to the purchase price of the car.
2. Registration tax. I pay one already and it is approx. $70 a year. They check the odometer when I go for my new tags, charge for mileage then.
3. Tire tax: Tires last on average about 50,000 miles. Say you want a $0.01 per mile tax, then the per tire tax would be $0.0025 * 50,000. If a big truck uses more than 4 tires they are having a larger impact on the roads, esp 18 wheelers. Also if you drive hard then your tires wear out faster (as does the road) so you pay more tax. If you drive more gently then you get more miles out of your car and pay less tax. (Also "Big Rigs" leave tires on the highway which need to be cleaned up...)
Also a Tariff on imported oil would really help national security.
Why not just continue to raise the fuel taxes to generate revenue? That would serve to continue to reduce fuel consumption which would be a good thing.
I keep seeing this argument thrown around. The problem is that people _need_ to go to work.
Sure, you may cut down on some vacation travel (even that is debatable, because if you're spending $100/night in a hotel, what's an extra $5 in fuel?).
You've essentially created a tax on the poor. People for whom buying a new, more efficient car isn't an option.
Anyone have any studies to this affect?
(and I don't mean just an analysis of recent trends, because a shitty economy and high gas prices would throw off any statistics. If no one is working then no one is driving to work or taking vacations or buying shipped goods.)
I fill my tank once a week @10 gallons * .185 cents * 52 weeks = $96.20 per year under current taxation. I drive 15,000 miles per year. Lets call it 1.5 cents for the new tax, (15,000 * $0.015 per mile) that's $225 per year best case. Gotta love politicos. Something is going away so lets not just figure out a way to get it back, lets get double, the sheeple will never notice
Just put a new tax on car owners. If you own 1 car, you are taxed very lightly. If you own say 3 cars, the tax starts getting heavier...tax the bastards that have a fleet of cars in a warehouse somewhere (and I'm not talking about dealerships).
I think that this is a wretched idea -- but the whole point of making it GPS is that it will track exactly where you are driving. You will not be charged for driving in Mexico and Canada, and you will be charged differently in Massachussettes and New Hampshire if they have different state taxes. GPS is certainly capable of detecting position to those levels of accuracy, and the maps will fit in a few MB of ROM.
Personally, I like the idea of a higher gas tax, because it incentivizes all good things -- electric cars, hybrids, higher efficiency, lighter cars, less pollution, less oil imports. That is of course exactly the reason that these GPS proposals are being made -- for the internal combustion, low efficiency, large car, highly polluting, oil lobbies.
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
I find it interesting and scary that in a story about using GPS to apply vehicle taxes, most posts are suggesting alternative forms of taxation.
/. that government be allowed to raise taxes on those very people?
"Just raise the gasoline tax"
"Tax based on the odometer reading."
Why isn't anybody posting a more sensible alternative? "Government shouldn't raise our taxes while we are hurting and must spend within it's means."
Governments should spend within their means just like people who bought too much home or ran up large credit card balances or have taken an income hit are now learning to live within their means. Citizens are having to seriously cut back on expenses and for the first time in decades are starting to save money and/or pay down debt.
So why shouldn't we demand that our government do the same?" In CA the government said "we will cut some spending, but we also want to raise your taxes as well." The people in CA said "No, stop raising taxes, focus on cutting more spending." The CA government and the Federal government aren't getting it, yet. However, we have to stand tall and tell our local, state and federal governments to not tax us anymore, to stop borrowing and to spend less.
If they are getting less tax revenue because people have lost their jobs or are trying to pay down debt, how does it seem sensible to anybody on
If you are unemployed (or retired living on a fixed income) right now, does it make sense for the government to increase the cost of electricity, heating oil and gasoline on you right now? If you are trying to pay down your student loans or car loan or credit card debt, does it make sense for government to take more of your income and impede your efforts? If you are trying to sell you house, does it make sense for the government to increase taxes and in the process reduce the number of potential buyers with enough remaining income to afford your house?"
THE SOLUTION IS TO FIGHT ALL INCREASED TAX INCREASES AND VOTE OUT SUPPORTERS OF THEM REGARDLESS OF PARTY.
Respect the Constitution
I work IT for a trucking company and all our trucks have satellite and GPS for location tracking and communications. The entire system can be defeated by putting a metal bucket over the dome, and drivers do this all the time when they want to drive somewhere and not be tracked. I can't imagine it would take much more than some aluminium foil to defeat the GPS signal.
Though I can't really fault Congress for their actions of late. If I had a few trillion dollars of someone else's money and knew they didn't give a crap what I did with it, I'd be completely retarded and irresponsible too.
I would like the congratulate the Libertarians on getting this idea implemented.
Now that they have a way to tax people based on how much they drive, a long time goal of the party is to only tax people for services they use, and not the available services.
The next steps will be:
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
We've had a portable GPS gadget (from Garmin) that we use in our cars for about 6 years now, and we now have a couple of cell phones (an iPhone and an Android G1) now with GPS, so we've gotten some idea how well the known problems with GPS have been debugged in recent years. The answer is that GPS just isn't ready for prime time.
One of my favorite anecdotes about the older one (which is actually still the best) was when I was driving south on a street a couple of towns away, and noticed that the GPS map showed me about a block north of where I actually was, and headed north. I pressed the button that switches to the number display, and sure enough, it said I was headed north at something like 50 mph, well over the speed limit. I switched back to the map, and after a few seconds, the "you are here" icon was at my current position, aimed south. I switched back to the numbers, and it said I was headed south - at over 250 mph!.
One thing that obviously bogus speed implies is that it thought I had reversed direction and travelled over the 2 blocks or so at high speed. So I switched to the "trip" display, and sure enough, it showed that I'd travelled nearly a mile so far on this trip, although I was only about half a mile south of my starting point. It had added up the backtracking as I switched direction twice, and included the extra 3 blocks or so in the trip, with the 3rd time over that block at high speed.
I've mentioned this before, in online discussions of proposals to use GPS trip records as court evidence. I've also looked at the trip records in a few friends' GPS gadgets, and all of them have shown similar wild driving. When you consider it as court evidence, it seems pretty clear that this sort of thing would simply disqualify the GPS records as valid evidence, since it would be obvious to anyone (even a judge) that the car simply can't perform the maneuvers that the GPS claims it did.
When it comes to mere mileage reports, however, I'd guess that it could be a lot harder to get the records thrown out. We're talking about bean counters here, not courts of law, and their approach would be to politely listen to you, then put the GPS data into their database as-is.
But it's possible that appeals could lead to rejection of the GPS data. Thus, a few days ago while driving somewhere nearby, my wife and I found that our GPS phones both reported our positions as around 100 miles away from where we were. The G1, for example, said that we were driving about 20 miles east of Cape Cod. After a while, it showed us at close to our correct position. Presumably that little (and wet) detour was done at around Mach 4 or 5, since that's the speed we'd need to travel from our position to the outer Cape in the second or so that the GPS said we did it in. And, as with the older GPS, our trip records did show that we made that detour, adding 200 miles or so to the trip of maybe 3 miles.
The iPhone showed a similar detail, but it had us driving on land on a road in the western part of the state, which was a place that the car actually could have been (except for taking only a second or two to get there).
Anyway, I sorta have the feeling that when the GPS trip record shows a car as driving along out in the ocean, that just might be the evidence that will get all its data dismissed as bogus.
GPS is useful for some things. It's a long way from being useful for official records of where the GPS gadget has actually been. And the behavior of commercial GPS gadgets hasn't improved in this regard over the last 5 or 6 years. They still show wild, instantaneous changes of position and physically impossible speeds for part of some trips. If there are exceptions, nobody I know has one. This is easy to show by just mentioning some of the funny data in ours, and listening while others regale listeners with their similar stories. As a gadget that's good at what it does, these occasional flukes are just funny. As the source of official data that we'll be charged for (in court or invoi
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Umm I don't really think 16lb difference is going to matter when most roads are designed to hand regular truck traffic. Prius: 3000lb (~15 sq in per tire * 4) = 50lb / sq in (P195/65R15 tires) Hummer H2 6600lb (~24.8 sq in per tire * 4) = 66lb / sq in (LT315/70R17 tires) This is not even taking in account for under inflated or overinflated tires! http://www.fao.org/docrep/w2809E/w2809e03.htm
Life moves pretty fast; if you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. -FB
I can't stand the obviously biased, negative tone of this article summary. Why do you people always assume any kind of taxation is a bad thing? Personally, I would like to see at least a 500% increase in our fuel taxes, to put us on-par with the rest of the world. More importantly, however, this would make taxation much more fair by taxing people on what they actually *use*. As it stands, I pay far more than my fair share of road taxes, since I only drive about 5000 mi/year, compared with disgusting sub- and ex-burbanites who commute ridiculous number of miles each day. Taxation should increase exponentially the farther away ones home is from their place of business. The reason GPS would be useful in the taxation, is that you could automatically charge more for certain high-value routes, like they do now for express lanes, bridges, etc. I hope they implement this soon!
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What happens when the GPS system goes down?
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
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Highly regessive tax structure! Taxing by the mile hurts car drivers who get better miles per gallon! Keep increasing the gas tax! That's fine! As the gas tax increases it hurts the trucking industry, but can be used to help create considerably greener railroad shipping options for the long haul. Roads will last longer since they are really only damaged by large trucks. "One legal 80,000 pound GVW tractor-trailer truck does as much damage to road pavement as 9,600 cars. (Highway Research Board, NAS, 1962). Overweight trucks chronically underpay their fair share of taxes and user fees for the repair of U.S. roads and bridges. By damaging roads, large trucks further degrade highway safety. (U.S. DOT, 1997)." http://www.saferoads.org/dangers-large-trucks
On a serious note, how will this effect people whose jobs require them to drive daily on a sales route? What about truckers whose job it is to take freight across the country? Do you have any idea how much more the costs of goods would become IF there is a per mile tax? I mean come on, the IRS recommends $.50 a mile PAY for someone who works a route, so suddenly $.50 a mile no longer covers gas, wear and tear, plus incentive to drive freight/goods/services.
And another thing, with the recent number of 1 out of 6 Americans out of work, why do we not start a federally funded infrastructure rebuilding project using those who are currently out of work? You could use labor, engineers, managers, etc to repair the failing infrastructure we currently have.
NOW THAT'S A BAILOUT THAT HELPS EVERYONE!
This idea is the perfect example of how a politician would execute the perfect political suicide.
This is simply a huge waste of money, as it has absolutely no chace of passing. This wouold be the perfect way o piss off the American people, an nobody wants to pay the government every single time they pull out of their driveway.
Plus, given the "Hacker Ethic" of gearheads, it'll be no time at all before someone figures out how to cheat the system.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
I tell my boss "You want to retain my services? Well, it's 100% telework from now on, unless the company covers my commute tax... and by the way my hourly rates are going up, punitively..."
My real need to drive is practically nonexistent. My work doesn't require my physical presence. I can walk to groceries. I don't otherwise go out much or travel. Make driving even more expensive and burdensome? Go ahead, I won't drive. Where's your tax now? In your wallet? No? Where? Hmm? IN MY BANK ACCOUNT WHERE IT STAYS, MOTHER FUCKER
First, some states have the emissions checks done by private enterprises (CT for one). And then you get states like Florida, that do not do an Emissions check at all. In fact, there is no check of any car in Florida that would involve looking at the odometer.
Oops....
And that's exactly how it should be. Some externalities are proportional to miles driven (road wear, traffic congestion) and others are proportional to the amount of fuel used (air pollution, energy dependence). Not taxing both creates an exploitable loophole.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Uh, no, heavy vehicles do more damage, despite their bigger tires: http://www.newsobserver.com/content/news/growth/traffic/trucks/index.html
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
You can cheat by putting bigger tires on your car, or putting an underdrive gearbox on your odometer cable, or if it is digital replace the VR wheel with one with fewer teeth. Of course you could put a tin foil hat on the GPS antenna. While this tax plan seems the most fair and reasonable, implementation seems problematic.
Use a fuel tax. There is no need for such an invasive "tax" system. Do you know how easy it is to defeat GPS signals? Too often you lose signal when you're driving in certain areas. This pay per use is unpalatable. For example, even those who do not drive benefit from the road/highway system, by having their goods and services delivered via it.
"consumption is proportional to milage!"
You fell into one of the traps they claim caused this problem. A fuel tax is NOT proportional to mileage unless all cars get the same mileage. It is only proportional to the mileage you get in one car. And even then it is not if you are going around hotrodding it one day and pussyfooting it the next.
Odometers fail, they can lie, they can be defeated. Of course there are ways to prevent a GPS based system from working too. Don't know that there is an easy answer here.
well there goes retirement and my plans to haul my little hybrid around on a trailer behind my RV.
Its not just that but as the government pushes them onto us the 'problem' will get worse. Interesting excuse to dig more into our private lives.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
And your zero petrol car!
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Do the math, if you assume you drive 20,000 miles a year that comes out to 200-400 dollars if they do it by mile. As opposed to driving a car that gets 20mpg you would only pay 180 dollars at 18 cents a gallon for the same 20,000 miles.
Not to mention they can then track people, levy fines, charge more for certain roads etc etc etc
Here's an argument to show that gas tax beats the alternative forms of transportation tax by a big margin.
Following are three potential revenue sources for road transportation:
1. Vehicle registration.
2. Mileage tracking / toll
3. Fuel tax.
Which one is the best? What is a fair standard to compare them? I think we should examine why the tax is needed in the first place, and which aspects of driving are relevant to this need. Let's see:
1. Road construction and maintenance. It mainly depends on mileage driven and vehicle weight.
2. Pollution cost. It mainly depends on mileage driven and inefficiency of the vehicle.
3. Strategic cost of oil source (such as soldiers in foreign countries). It mainly depends on the amount of fuel consumed.
4. Paper work for ownership. It is essentially per vehicle.
5. Parking space. It is roughly proportional to number of trips and size of vehicle.
Item 4 is the only one that should be addressed by vehicle tax. All other items are nicely represented by gas tax. For these items, either per vehicle or per mile taxes would be grossly biased.
Are there more important reasons to tax road transportation? Are there fairer taxation methods?
So they penalize drivers in the big/rural States, where fuel use is more efficient, instead of the idiots who idle in traffic for hours because they refuse to ride the bus.
Nice.
From an engineering perspective, we could significantly reduce the amount of taxes needed for road maintenance if we had the guts to do three things:
1. Fix the #$@#$ rail system - so bureaucratic and mismanaged that rail freight is not economical
2. Compel heavy items and large volumes to transit via rail. Heavy trucks are the things that destroy the roads! The weight and stresses aplied by cars are substantively less than those freight trucks. Of course, freight trucks pay more than you and I do, but not commensurate with the damage they do.
3. Be prepared to WAIT for products. This is the death knell. We're so impatient as a culture that the additional time it would take to manage freight efficiently over rail would mean that "air" shipments and "next day by 10:30" would likely be infeasible - unless we taxed their delivery a multiple of 10 or more to make up for the road damage.
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
Seems like another market in the making...
Why not just tap into ODB-II and get the current odometer reading? Why does this have to be done by GPS?
(by 2020, all cars will have USB ports to power the stuff that used to pushed into the lighter jack).
I can't imagine that we will still have USB in 11 years.
This now adds a ridiculously complicated system that will have legal penalties if you "tamper" with it. What happens if you add a part to your car shields the GPS antenna and it can't get a fix anymore? If you bust the electrical system and the tax tracker no longer gets powered.
We don't need any mandated, you can't touch this, systems in our lives.
The report is wrong anyhow. This is no longer a tax. This is now a fee. The government should not be in the business of collecting fees for usage.
This plan can be easily foiled with a car tinfoil hat.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Saving your own money? Definitely not abuse.
The fuel tax has a useful advantage: drivers of heavier, less fuel-efficient vehicles pay more tax. Consider a 45 cent per gallon fuel tax and 2 cent per mile road-use tax. Drivers of a Suburban getting 15 miles per gallon pay 3 cents a mile for the fuel tax, so the road use fee saves them a penny per mile. If you have a Prius getting 45 miles per gallon, you pay only one cent per mile for fuel tax, so the road use fee costs you an extra penny per mile. If you have a Tesla, your tax went from nothing to 2 cents per mile: about the same as the cost of electricity to recharge the car in many states (200 mile range on a 40 kWhr recharge = 5 miles per kWhr and 10 cents per kWhr). It reverses the tax incentive to drive a more efficient car!
If newer cars are becoming hybrid, or even electric aren't their overall weights lowering? And if they are doesn't that less weight on the road increase the longevity of it? And If that is correct wouldn't the cost of actually maintaining them decrease as well? This GPS shit is for knowing where you are plain and simple baby. Like the NAIA crap with cattle.
..GPS tracking by the government shows how far apart we are just in general principles as per my above first reply about how far we are into a full police state and how people have been slowly conditioned to accept it and not even see it. I remember saying the same thing about electronic computerized voting way back here before it even started, when it was a lot more popular in concept because it was "computerized', high tech, so it just must be mo' bettah. I called shenanigans then as well, because I could see the obvious high level abuse potential and how they could hack elections easier. And most likely, they have, given all the evidence that has come out since the 2000 elections to today.
Same deal here, just part of their NWO stew of crap they keep throwing at the people and making "law". From my POV, just at a very basic and important level, the GPS tracking itself is an outright outrageous *abuse*, let alone *charging* you cash money for this dubious privilege.
And like I said, it has nothing to do with revenue, that's the misdirection part, the con they are using to push this. I already outlined a completely viable alternative for both increasing road maintenance revenue, plus reducing the cost of fuel to the driver, without any obnoxious big brother tracking required.
We'll have to more or less agree to disagree on at least a few points here. I'm just lucky enough to remember living when such things would have been almost automatically vilified and would have stood no chance in hell of being made "law"..now..looks like the goons are winning "hearts and minds". Sadly.
And I will keep pointing out when that is happening, or when it looks to happen, like with this issue. Because I actually care about old fashioned personal freedoms and a strictly regulated and controlled government. An all powerful government with a strictly controlled population is not the original design here.
Heh, I am in farming, I can recognize easily when a farmer is controlling his herd, I do it daily, what needs to happen. You have to do surveillance, control, and watch your fences. Look around at government now, what do you see? What I see has way too many parallels for complacency or for me to accept it is anything other than what it looks like, using occam's razor.
The current, per gallon tax is working.
Heavier vehicles use more fuel and put more wear and tear on the roads.
Driving further means higher fuel use.
If you are a poor family driving a 20 yr old suburban, you are taxed higher than a multi-millionaire driving a tesla or Insight. But your car is actually causing more damage and isn't that what we want to discourage?
Technology isn't always a good answer. KISS is usually the better solution.
uploaded to a billing center
Can someone explain to me how it would be feasible to have millions of cars uploading data regularly? Where is the infrastructure for this? Who pays for the comms and equipment?
-- Braden's law of data: All data spends some of its lifetime in an excel spreadsheet.
By 2020 most of the people would have fled the tax heavy countries and moved to the tax free countries like a few in the Middle East. Not having to pay taxes also makes you live longer as you don't have to worry about all the complicated tax systems.
"My solution: Tax tires. It has a direct correlation to road usage and all vehicles use tires. If you drive hard you do more damage to the road and your tires, meaning you'll need to replace both sooner. If you drive like a granny your tires will last longer and so will the roads."
Agriculture vehicles.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
The book ("Sustainable Energy - without the hot air") in http://tech.slashdot.org/submission/1030811/Solving-the-Energy-Crisis-by-Tripling-Electricity describes an interesting variant on this. Instead of charging by distance travelled, the idea is the charge by the level of congestion, which is measured by a radio transmitter/receiver which detects the proximity of other (similarly equipped) vehicles. Congested driving leads to higher fuel consumption, so congestion charging taxes both high fuel consumption and impact on other road users.
This is not about tracking mileage. It is about tracking people. The tax on gas is already a "tax on mileage". It does not make any sense to tax mileage itself...
thomasdamgaard.dk.
Here is my slant on this:
This is just one more way they want to try and force everyone who moved out of ghettos and slums to the suburbs (taking their money with them) back into the inner cities so we can get shot at again by drug dealers and thugs.
This has little to do with roads, there are hundreds of ways, just here on slashdot alone, that could get them additional revenue to support roads. This is pure social engineering nothing more.
This just goes back to use tax arguments that will never get resolved.
Tolls are far more effective IMHO then mileage tax. Limited private operated expressways may also be in order. More HOV lanes and expressPasses are better solutions. Tax credits on alternative fuel vechicles are better solutions.
This is domestic spying, plain and simple.
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
Taxing road users per mile of use is a bad idea if it does not take into account the mass of the vehicle, condition of the vehicle and condition of the vehicle's exhaust.
Why:
This will all be very difficult to regulate.
This is why a tax on gasoline works well:
In my opinion, they should be looking to double or triple the tax on fuel. They would easily collect more money and it is easy for them to collect payment as the infrastructure is already in place. It would cost the taxpayers nothing more in infrastructure and equipment. Even if they double the tax per gallon of fuel, it won't affect the price of gasoline as much as recent fuel price fluctuations during the past 12 months.
A tax on only milage will hurt fuel efficient and alternative fuel vehicles.
No sig. Move along - nothing to see here.