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Draft Proposal Would Create Agency To Tax Cars By the Mile
theodp writes "The Hill reports that the Obama administration has floated a transportation authorization bill that would require the study and implementation of a plan to tax automobile drivers based on how many miles they drive. The plan is a part of the administration's 'Transportation Opportunities Act,' and calls for spending $200 million to implement a new Surface Transportation Revenue Alternatives Office tasked with creating a 'study framework that defines the functionality of a mileage-based user fee system and other systems.' The office would be required to consider four factors — the capability of states to enforce payment, the reliability of technology, administrative costs, and 'user acceptance' — in field trials slated to begin within four years at unspecified sites. Forbes suggests the so-called vehicle miles traveled (VMT) tax should be called the Rube Goldberg Gas Tax, because while its objective is the same as the gas tax, the way it collects revenue is extremely complex, costly and cumbersome." The disclaimers are thick on the ground, though; note, this is an "early draft," not pending legislation.
This sounds very, very bad.
If federal gas tax is lifted.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
They read the odometer when you renew your plates..
I will expect my 200 mil in small unmarked, non sequential bills... thankyouverymuch
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
It will never pass the house.
“This is not an administration proposal," White House spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki said. "This is not a bill supported by the administration. This was an early working draft proposal that was never formally circulated within the administration, does not taken into account the advice of the president’s senior advisers, economic team or Cabinet officials, and does not represent the views of the president.”
Not quite the same as the summary...
I'll walk. Or will they tax me for every step I take?
Land of The Taxed! This is way more correct =)
How about you fix the tax loopholes, get rid of oil subsidies, and force the oil companies that for every cent above 2 dollars they charge per gallon, the US government gets 2 cents of it. Bet you it will make more than this plan and oil will miraculously go down to 2 dollars again!
Obama would probably use the money to socialize auto insurance. Or the legislation also makes everyone pay insurance by the mile.
Republicans want to have their cake and eat it too. They know, knew, and understand that you cannot fix a deficit or reduce the national debt without raising taxes. So all their talk about cutting and tax reduction is impossible on paper, basic math will tell you less revenue in means less to spend with. Less input = less output. The only question is who is going to pay the taxes when implemented.
It's going to take some taxes like this, and unfortunately driving is a luxury. Just so long as we don't get taxed for the bus, the train, the plane or group transportation. I mean this tax probably will suck and be annoying but its this or we lose social security, education, healthcare, and we get to watch grandma die.because you couldn't afford her medicine or treatment.
Creative taxation is the best move Obama could have made. As a libertarian I don't like taxes, but I do like having healthcare so let's be realistic, unless you are a libertarian millionaire or billionaire, you will rely on the government at some point in life whether it be financial aid, healthcare, or something else. And the Walton's and Koch bro's are not going to save grandma, they aren't going to help you pay for your education, and they wont give you money to survive so you don't become a criminal hooligan when unemployed or laid off. The government is the only check and balance against the corporation. The government in theory exists to defend human rights, and even if it doesn't do the job in practice, it is at least supposed to. The corporation doesn't care about human rights, isn't designed to be capable of caring, and doesn't care about the national interest or otherwise. Even if the national interest is GDP and other measures which equally benefit all Americans, corporations don't even care what happens to America because they have offices around the globe, so think about that corporatist liberatians. Think about the private prisons, the sweat shops, the outright sex slaves being trafficked, and tell me what corporations have done about it.
What is the difference between this and the already-in-place fuel tax? The fuel tax is even better at metering costs to those that chew up roads (heavy vehicles). This sounds like a solution looking for a cause to me.
The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.
It would destroy the trucking industry, would raise prices on everything, crush those in rural areas which are usually poor, push us back into a recession and even the few of our senators with a brain can figure this out and make sure it never happens.
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At least the gasoline taxes encourage driving more fuel-efficient vehicles. This is simply a regressive tax that discourages driving. I guess Standard Oil, Firestone and GM aren't behind this one.
New car? Tax.
Inheritance? Tax.
Stock profit? Tax.
Porn? Tax.
Movie? Tax.
Game? Tax.
Cigar? Tax.
Coffee? Tax.
Junk Food? Tax.
Sugar/HFCS? Tax.
Transfat? Tax.
Liquor? Tax.
(Legalize Marijuana?) Tax.
Pets (Pet food?) ? Tax.
Internet (Depending on what you do...)? Tax.
Gambling? Tax.
Ipod? Tax.
Big Screen TV? Tax.
Sporting event? Tax.
Concert? Tax.
This would apply to a wide range of people. Then it can be specialized, so that violent games or movies are taxed more for example.
Tax all the luxuries that people buy but can live without or don't really need. Keep the social services that people need. Cut taxes on stuff people need like food.
Unless you're walking on unpaved dirt road, otherwise I would think you're inflicting minute damage to the pavement and thus be subjected to a use tax on the pavement.
Yeah, as if that makes a lot of sense. But alas we've seen things done by the government that made even less sense before...
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
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I have a really hard time believing you are a libertarian. C'mon admit it, you're a socialist.
Opportunities for snoops, nannies and a new jobs program that a simple increase to the gas tax could never accomplish.
So unless we are going to somehow use androids or robots to repair and build roads, we probably should consider taxing by the mile.
Basically there is a deficit, it has to be cut and the national debt has to be reduced. Social security has to be saved as well. This means only one option, we must raise taxes or die.
It's true what they say: Obama administration and automobile drivers don't mix. It's like eating a spoonful of Drano. Sure, it'll clean you out, but it'll leave you hollow inside...
If you're not confused, you're not paying attention
As long as my compact car would be taxed at a lower rate than, say, an Excursion, Hummer, or 18-wheeler as my car would do exponentially less damage to the road, I wouldn't be completely against the idea.
Also, as long as they tax at time of registration or inspection and don't force me to install and/or pay for a GPS unit to track my movements.
-SaNo
The purpose of this is to track and control the citizens of the United States.
If this law does pass then I will wrap my car in a Faraday cage and refuse to undergo what ever inspection it is that dumps the database to the "Homeland security" inspection process.
The people will have whatever tyranny they allow to exist.
If they include in the language to pass it a limitation, I would support it. If they guarantee that 100% of the money raised from this goes to build and support infrastructure for the vehicles that are taxed, I would support it. But, the chances of that are slim and none.
If taxes were 100%, nobody would work and tax revenue would be zero. If taxes were 0%, tax revenue would also be zero. At some point in between, it is experimentally known that tax revenue is greater than zero. From this, we can prove mathematically that the tax rate that maximizes tax revenue is less than 100%. You haven't shown that our taxes are below that rate.
What about the taxes we already pay to the state for DOT maintenance? What about the income taxes we already pay? What about the vehicle taxes we already pay for 'regular yearly use' (at least in NC we do). What about the inspection fees we have to pay? What about tax-title-tag fees when we buy a vehicle? What about the taxes added to gasoline and diesel prices?
I understand the need to ween America off of foreign oil, but is placing heavy taxes on vehicular use really going to do it? Would this policy exempt electronic vehicles? Ethanol/Corn Derivatives? Motorcycles? Scooters?
How about cutting the defense budget, isn't that where roughly 50% of our federal discretionary budget goes? I understand the whole with taxes I buy civilization thing, but even if you taxed 100% of every single person's income, it still would not balance the budget and all the deficit spending.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
For saving the environment and for not saving the environment... Makes perfect sense.
Have you ever heard of "cutting spending"?
The last government in the UK had a similar plan. No doubt other governments around Europe are also considering it. It would be a nice way to bring in monitoring of all vehicles so that you could never travel anonymously again.
The companies with the technology want to bring it in because it means money for them. The civil servants want it because it simplifies their job. The government wants it because it gives them more control over the population.
Don't want to be monitored? Tough. It's coming whether you like it or not. There's no use moaning about it.
They need to replace the gas tax because cars now get better gas mileage, effectively reducing the amoung of revenue brought in. To compound the problem revenue is predicated on activity, meaning when gas prices rise and people drive less less revenue comes in, but the wages and costs of maintaining the roads stays the same, thereby creating a deficit.
For my money, I'd rather see them make toll roads of all major interstate highways than create more non value added administrative jobs.
Why would you want to tax vehicle miles instead of gas used? Taxing gas promotes fuel efficiency AND carpooling, public transit, living closer to work, etc. It amounts to the same thing, yet I get the distinct feeling the ONLY reason this proposal is being floated is because an actual gas tax is seen as politically untenable, despite being more effective, less onerous (would you rather an extra $5 each time you fill up or pay $250 at the end of the year?), and proven to be effective in dozens of other nations with vastly more efficient vehicles than are popular here. One more example of Democrats crippling themselves for sake of appeasing a 'political reality' that is at odds with doing what is necessary to preserve our nation's economy in the face of perpetually rising oil prices. Of course, that assumes that the Democrats actually cared about anything but securing enough corporate donations to win re-election.
Perhaps the answer is to tax cars by calculation of fuel economy, weight, engine size, tank size etc. and stick them in various bands, e.g. A-F with A being most efficient, F being worst. Don't tax anyone in A and punitively raise the tax from bands B-F. People will buy more fuel efficient vehicles just to avoid the hassle of paying taxes on them.
driving is a luxury
What planet are you on? 95% of the year I do for work.
If they deploy an in car sensor, it will be hacked within days, they will have a high rate of "breaking" on their own, and they will be removed and kept at home. If they require it in new cars, it will kill car sales and boost the used car market.
Public acceptance will never happen. GPS tracking is out, the recent iPhone debacle showed that people won't stand for it. Every other method will be defrauded on a massive scale (Disable speedo/odometer, use cell phone GPS for speedometer, for example.)
This sentence no verb.
Just give us $12.00 (USD) per gallon gas!
We don't need another IRS.
Then the people with money and no sense would continue to drive their Hummers and the creative among us would build vehicles that make our world work without oil.....
And the rest of us will continue to ride our bicycles.
They read the odometer when you renew your plates..
They don't want to actually just measure your miles driven. They want to track wherever you drive.
They know that this will never pass the House of Reps too. Right now all they want to do is track all the people who are extremely upset at the mere idea of this, and voice their opposition on the Internet so they can gather more names to add onto their list of people who they deem to be "anti-authority". And that part is working phenomenally well.
Toll booths on all major routes.
A republic cannot succeed till it contains a certain body of men imbued with the principles of justice and honour.
Republicans also know the deficit is a canard but the math is too complicated for their base to figure the ruse out.
forgetting the costs associated with automobile use. on our air quality, our security (al qaeda is funded by petrodollars), on our quality of life (aren't traffic jams and long commutes wonderful?), etc
and also expect a bunch of comments bloviating about socialism and communism, when the costs we already have (air quality, security, etc) are socialized: you pay for them, in group ways rather than individual ways. it's a socialized cost, and its a more abstract, nonmonetary cost. so because such costs don't appear as line items on a tax statement, but instead in lung cancer rates, terrorist bombings, and lost hours commuting, certain minds that can't see the bigger more abstract picture will of course see the federal government imposing unfair costs on them for no reason (or contrived, propagandistic reasons)
this is simply a reflection that certain subpar minds can't engage in more subtle thinking. they can only hammer home oversimplifications in issues like this tax, and many other issues. unfortunately, such shrill narrow minds are always the loudest voices in the room
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
...if you get rid of other infrastructure taxes.
Nobody is advocating taxing 100%. I don't know where you got that idea. Just like nobody is advocating we cut 100% of the government. The goal of a libertarian nationalist is to both shrink the cost of government while also increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of government.
This does not mean cutting programs. This means keeping all the programs which provide benefit to the people, and streamlining them to maximal efficiency per dollar. This means you keep social security, you can have universal healthcare, but there have to be some taxes instituted to pay for it. A Junk food or sugar tax would be a perfect example of a tax which could reduce the cost of universal healthcare while also bringing in money to help pay for it.
So you don't necessarily just need a higher tax rate, or to cut costs, but you need smarter or more intelligent taxation, and more streamlined government processes. Moving to high tech to help improve productivity in the government, and making the government employee more efficient and productive than the private sector could be a start. Government could benefit greatly from just upgrading their computers, automating tasks, or outsourcing the unimportant tasks such as answering the telephone.
But of course there are problems with efficiency, because politics play such a role in government. And of course you have people who don't ever want to raise taxes even when it reduces costs and improve efficiency in the long term. A gas tax, pollution tax, junk food tax, all increase efficiency and productivity in the long term. Do you want to cut the deficit or complain about taxes? You can't do both at the same time and expect to accomplish much.
Each time some morons in Washington get together to cook up a way to screw us they get slapped with an idiot tax.
Easier to implement, harder to cheat on, and it rewards using fuel efficient cars.
I know here in Pennsylvania we have to get our cars inspected annually; why not just check the odometer then and issue a tax receipt to the owner and to the IRS? No additional technology necessary.
Of course, I'm avoiding the argument as to whether this is necessary or a good idea in any way (which it's probably not) but if they're going to do it, it should be really, really easy to implement.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Yes, and then what? Then you raise taxes.
Why is it whenever anyone says anything about corporations being controlled, the label "socialist" is trotted out immediately?
Let me explain something to you - letting corporations do whatever they want has ruined things before. For citations, see the history of Industrialization in the West (The U.S. circa 1900) and the recent housing bubble crash as well as the (ongoing) global recession.
Still think it's a good idea to let corporations do whatever they want? It would be tribalism on so many different levels that I can't believe anyone really thinks that's a desirable objective.
The system will be GPS and cell based. They will be able to track your position history (to determine miles traveled and where). The cell companies that transport the data will get richer!
The Prius randomly accelerates and the Chevy Volt's steering wheel comes off while driving, hopefully before it burns my garage down from it's batteries.
http://www.stopacop.so -- You have rights. How about standing up for them before they go away?
1. Outline a proposal many people find problematic
2. If people object say 'these people are rash and stupid; it's only a proposal'
3. If people don't object then make it happen, and if people later object say 'these people are slow and stupid, they should have raised this when I gave them a chance'
win/win for whoever is in power
You may want to read these page
http://www.lp.org/issues/taxes
http://www.lp.org/issues/healthcare
on the Libertarian Party's website. I don't think you understand what a Libertarian is.
I don’t see why everyone thinks this would be so hard to implement. Instead of monitoring cars remotely or tracking them from road sensors, just develop a distance sensitive material that degrades at a somewhat linear rate to the efficiency of your car. The driver would be required to buy this object in order to use the car and the object should have a lifespan of less than 500 miles. The added benefit of this system is that you can then enforce all kinds of environmental rules. If you drive a ‘gas guzzler’, you’d be required to buy the version that degrades more quickly. If you drive a turbo-diesel or small hybrid, you could buy the version that degrades at a slower rate.
I contacted my congressman before complaining here on /.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
From TFA:
The proposed “Transportation Opportunities Act” would mandate a vehicle miles traveled (VMT) tax that’s calculated by installing electronic equipment on each car and at filling stations. VMT calculation and payment would take place electronically every time you buy gas at the pump.
It won't be soon but, at some point, enough cars will be electric that we will need an alternative to the fuel tax. But electric cars don't go to filling stations which makes a mileage tax based on visits to filling stations kind of pointless. It's a lot more complex than the fuel tax and it is even less accurate. Fuel taxes account for the fact that larger vehicles, which cause more damage to the roads per mile, also burn more fuel per mile.
As others have said, it is a lot simpler to just raise the fuel tax. Actually, I don't understand why the fuel tax is a fixed value anyway. If it were a % of the purchase price like ordinary sales taxes, then revenue should stay fairly level as prices rise and usage drops.
I don't see the value in this, it basically means they'd be taxing the people who have to commute to work. I myself have a 30 to 45 minute commute each day. My car is very fuel efficient though (32MPG on average), but why should I pay more than say someone who buys a gas guzzler (10MPG) but doesn't have to commute to work? And the commute thing isn't so much by choice than by it's better than any other offer I've had in my direct area by far.
I think gas tax is currently "fair", but if they just want to keep putting more taxes on the middle and lower class people then I guess this idea makes sense...
Ave Molech Setting
just increase the tax on gas instead: by that not only do you tax cars by the mile, but you actually have fuel efficiency included in the tax and an actual incentive for drivers to use more fuel efficient cars. And thus an incentive to avoid unnecessary CO2 emission. Also, if the gas or diesel is taxed directly, large trucks will automatically pay more tax per kilometer, which relates nicely to the bigger damage they cause on highways.
So you can't close loopholes when corporations write the laws.
What you can do however is gain the support of corporations to institute a tax to pay for infrastructure that helps reduce the costs to corporations. If less people are late for work it in theory reduces costs for corporations. If less people have to physically go to work because of telework it reduces costs for corporations. Driving just doesn't benefit the economy all that much and is a necessary evil.
The question is where do we get the tax revenue, and if we cannot get it from corporations because corporations are multinational, we must get it from people who can only live in one nation at a time.
If you want to make the most of a diminishing resource like oil, you want those who use the most to pay the most tax. This will hopefully cut down on folks commuting or running errands in GM Suburbans or Denalis. A gas tax is better at doing that than a miles driven tax. And easier to collect.
You don't sound much like libertarians that I met. The corporations are creatures of state, a 19th century debate not known to so many today.
The primary way to cut deficits is to quit spending money you don't have by nitwits and crooks.
Sure the rich have the money to pay taxes, they also have the military, the government, the corporations, and anyone else they can bribe rather than pay taxes.
This means unless you and the middle class mob point your guns at them, they aren't going to pay taxes. The middle class is literally powerless so trying to say we are going to make billionaires pay taxes, we and what army are supposed to do this?
... unfortunately driving is a luxury
What country do you live in?!?
In the US, driving is a necessity - unless you live in a large city with a public transit system - even then, it sucks. I live in Metro Atlanta and the MARTA is a joke - and that's BEFORE they cut service because of spending cuts as a result of lower sales tax revenues and lower ridership.
I wish it were a luxury! Really I do. I hate cars. I hate the expense. Here's something I wish someone who knew about the European tax system and the US driving expenses would do:
Compare the costs associated with owning and driving a car in the US with the extra taxes the Europeans pay for a superior public transit system.
I think if yo consider those things, the Europeans and others in "overly taxed" countries aren't as bad off as the propaganda in our country makes them out to be.
Who says only drivers should pay? Non drivers get the benefit of the roads too. Unless of course they don't shop, use the emergency systems, or engage in commerce of any kind.
The cost of the road infrastructure is fairly small compared to several other social programs. If the government wasn't so tied up in being everyone's mother, the cost of infrastructure would be easily collected via small income/sales taxes (or whatever) and the vast majority of people would accept those taxes because there is tangible and obvious benefits to having a working infrastructure.
So cars in Manhattan will pay $1 year tax and rural areas will pay $1,000 year tax? Nice!
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
Of course you can. You do it by spending less.
Why should the government save grandma? Paying for education... well, first there's the racket of Universities always increasing their tuition by the amount the government allows students to borrow, but more importantly it's the only kind of loan you can't discharge in bankruptcy. Student lending is a veritable goldmine for the government, and if they didn't have laws protecting their goldmine you can bet your bottom dollar that private banks would take up the mantle. Higher education is so lucrative it's ridiculous.
Unemployment? Well, that's insurance more or less. You pay an unemployment tax, and then if you later become unemployed you can collect. If the government didn't have a monopoly on that, too, I'd probably pay a private insurer for the same thing.
Losing social security? Fine by me. Let the workers take the ridiculous amount of money they pour into that system every paycheck and let them invest it on their own. Shoot, even mandate that you must invest a certain percent of your income somewhere if you're worried about people not doing it. Education? Well, see above. If you're in the U.S., you pay out the nose for it. Healthcare.. not really sure how taxes are related to that.
Sony ha
Will I be taxed when driving on privately owned and maintained roads? The only way to exclude that would be some kind of GPS device, at which point, I'd rather be taxed per mile even from driving loops in my driveway, I can only imagine such a device being used for other nefarious purposes.
>>>They know, knew, and understand that you cannot fix a deficit or reduce the national debt without raising taxes.
Of course you can.
Just spend less money. It's how I fixed my deficit, while my wages held steady. Canceled the cable, canceled the cellphone, turned off the heat, et cetera. Same principle applies at the national level - just cut spending on unnecessary bullshit (like wars, studying butterfly sex, renovating congressional offices, and so on).
>>>driving is a luxury. Just so long as we don't get taxed for the bus, the train, the plane or group transportation.
Why should these individuals be tax-free? I say if car drivers are hit with an additional ~25% per year, then the same thing should happen to metro/bus tickets. Add another 25% tax.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
After the money, the biggest complaint about the IRS is how complicated compliance is. Gas tax? You just pay it at the pump. They want to bring IRS paperwork into the driving experience? What. Are. They. Smoking???
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
So I have to buy a radio transmitter to tattle on me and enforce my taxation?
Why not use the existing equipment, think its got one of those fancy names like.... odometer.
Buy a car, the odometer reading is taken, and recorded by the courthouse. When I renew my tabs I report the reading on my odometer and pay a tax accordingly. Every 5 years, the reading is taken by an official to ensure that I haven't been lying (or if I was, I now have 5 years worth of tax to pay. When the car is sold the reading is taken by an official and I pay all relevant tax, and the number is recorded for the new owner.
Total additional cost 1 man minute per car per year (of government employee time) to check the odometer pentanually (assumed to take 5m each time).
Those of us in rural areas will get hit the hardest on this. I have to drive a minimum of 60 miles one way to get to decent shopping. This would just make me want to go to those places less and maybe order even more over the net. However, it is hard to get food over the net.
This is what the Gas Tax is for, and the only thing this would do right now is not give a break to early adopters for hybrids and electric vehicles. For the good of the planet, they should really be encouraged as much as possible. There might come a time when the Gas Tax is no longer relevent and something else will need to be implemented, but that time certainly isn't now. We've even taken steps back from electrical vehicle adoption...
-Signed, a 17.5 mpg 1999 Ford Explorer V8 driver who drives 50 miles round trip for work every day.
Your driving each day creates more wear on the roads and increases ems, police, emergency costs far more than the person who doesn't do that amount of driving. The point of the gas tax wasn't to tax gas, it was to pay for the upkeep and safety on the roads. Fuel efficiency has nothing to do with it except that for decades it was a very convenience way of getting that money that scaled reasonably well based on usage and wear cause by the vehicle (heavier = more wear, greater rid).
What is the difference between this and the already-in-place fuel tax?
Maybe not initially, but some future version of the bill won't simply require an odometer reading at an inspection station, but rather a high-resolution location log. The gas tax gathers no such information.
Note to 2018: see, I told you so.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I already moderated, but screw that. I feel the need to point out that this bill doesn't take into account that the US on the whole lacks viable public transportation systems in all but the largest and densest metropolitan areas.
For that majority of Americans who don't live in New York, Chicago, DC, etc., public transportation is simply not an option. Taking into account that most of us are probably living at our means or just below it, any sort of significant increase in our transportation costs would most likely have a dire impact on the economy on the whole as people begin to reach the point that they can no longer afford to drive our cars. We're already seeing some of that now with the price of gas as high as it is.
Lastly, this is America dammit. The roadtrip is practically as American as Baseball and Apple Pie. We've grown up with a culture that glorifies the cross country road trip. I for one don't want to give that up. :-P
If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.
while its objective is the same as the gas tax,
Then why have both? You mean you're getting rid of the gas tax? Oh wait... fucked again.
Gotta love our effed up government looking for more ways to tax the ever living crap out of what we barely have left - in an economy that's almost collapsing.
Didn't they already borrow so much money that it's not possible to pay it all back? And now they want more??? How much is enough?
And how much did these traitors spend invading Libya? It's so insane.
I live in a large city, but for some bizarre reason we have little to zero public transit. If you want to go anywhere, you'd better own a car. This type of tax would eat us alive.
So why not just tax the electricity they consume? The more you travel the more energy you use.
Granted that non-transportation uses of electricity don't damage road infrastructure the way trucks do,
but you gotta recover your costs from somewhere.
If you end up charging too much, just use the remainder to help maintain the electrical grid.
Alternatively, just add the road infrastructure cost as a tax on tires - making sure that big truck tires get charged more.
The more you drive down the road, the more you need to replace your tires, the more infrastructure tax you pay.
There's any number of ways to keep this as a consumption-based tax so as to avoid something more intrusive.
In order to maintain our sidewalks and trails, those who use them will be taxed at the basic rate of .001 cent per step. Runners and joggers will be taxed at .002 cents, while the obese will incur a X2 penalty. Senior citizens may apply for a 20% discount, and toddlers may walk free till the age of 5. It is mandatory to upload your usage every day at one of our friendly RFID stations located throughout the city. Failure to pay the Ambulatory Maintenance Fee will result in attachment of leg irons until the assessment is paid in full. Attempting to walk on one's hands to bypass the pedometer will result in a 1 month sentence at a local treadmill energy reclamation center.
Libertarian? Noam Chomsky not David Koch.
If you don't know the difference then you are a corporatist posing as a libertarian. A real libertarian believes in human rights, a corporatist only believes in rights for corporations.
They tried to do this in the Netherlands, called it 'rekeningrijden'. It would feature a GPS receiver in every car with a GPRS/UMTS modem, which also would have a radio transmitter that could be detected outside of the car - to be able to fine you if you have disabled the device. The GPS receiver was to not tax outside the country and for higher taxes in times of busy traffic. The device was only to send the aggregated data, not the actual location data.
The mainreasons beyond normal gas tax (which is way higher here than in the US as well...) would be not being able to buy gas in neighbouring countries to evade the tax and letting people pay more during the hours with the most traffic in the most busy places. It would be cheaper for smaller cars and cars that use less gas.
Luckily, this never got through. The system would have been horribly complex and had serious privacy issues...
* The fuel tax is removed
* The miles-traveled box does NOTHING but record mileage (on a per-state basis, to keep states that impose their own taxes happy)
* In particular, the box does NOT record time-stamped locations
* The miles-traveled box has open-source firmware (so the non-logging properties can be validated by all)
The chances of such a non-intrusive system being implemented are near zero, of course.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Part of the problem with that is how to apportion state funds... Since the driver could stay in state or drive cross country, some states might get more vehicle travel and others less..
I think a better compromise is and RF signal at state border, identifying the car and odometer reading, and then another written reading in your registration form, simple math would calculate out the apportionment. It would divulge if your car left the state, and how far it went but nothing on where.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
Really nicely and usefuly spent money. Thank God I don't live in US...
it is time to bring out my hover craft. what will it be next tax per foot step? tax per breath taking? tax for every second alive? even with all those taxes the bloated government would still be bankrupt.
I think it should have said "Daft Proposal..."
--When you buy proprietary software, you don't get better software. What you get is the right to complain about it.
Here in Canada we get screwed in various ways, depending on the province: http://www.ontariogasprices.com/Can_Tax_Info.aspx
There's already Federal excise tax per litre, then there's a Federal sales tax (GST) lumped in on top! Talk about getting it both ways.
This is a state power and the feds have no business sticking their nose in this
Cars are becoming more fuel efficient, which is a good thing, but at the same time it is generating less revenue for trasnportation. The per-mile tax attempts to build a revenue stream that is not based off of gas. Imagine how roads will be funded if we drive electric cars. They still use roads, but they do not use the gas.
The gas tax is a great tax. It self regulates for low mileage vehicles, heavy vehicles, and people who drive a lot. It also governs behavior by encouraging people to purchase high mileage cars when gasoline become expensive. The real reason they want this tax is not revenue. It's information. This is about having the ability to track people and machines as they move about the country. It will be an eternal battle to keep this at bay. The government will always be floating it, encouraging it, pushing it, inserting it in bills, you name it. Welcome to a new era.
Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it. - Ronald Reagan
Of course you can. You do it by spending less.
And then you raise taxes. Just spending less today doesn't mean the cost of healthcare wont rise as the population grows larger and sicker. So just cutting costs without raising taxes wont work. You have to cut costs and increase revenue.
Why should the government save grandma?
The government is a human rights corporation, as well as a defense corporation. The US Constitution shows this if you read it. Capitalism, corporate personhood, and corporate profits are not in the US Constitution. I'm not saying the government should literally save grandmas life, but defense of liberty is in the Constitution and corporations are an oppressive force. They diminish liberty, and this includes health insurance corporations.
Paying for education... well, first there's the racket of Universities always increasing their tuition by the amount the government allows students to borrow, but more importantly it's the only kind of loan you can't discharge in bankruptcy. Student lending is a veritable goldmine for the government, and if they didn't have laws protecting their goldmine you can bet your bottom dollar that private banks would take up the mantle. Higher education is so lucrative it's ridiculous.
I agree. So is debt. So the banks aren't any better encouraging people to buy houses they cannot afford.
Unemployment? Well, that's insurance more or less. You pay an unemployment tax, and then if you later become unemployed you can collect.
And this is why government should solve healthcare. It will cost in taxes, but the government would be the better institution and probably the only institution to handle it. Profiting from sickness is as bad as profiting from prison. It's not going to reduce costs, it increases costs.
Losing social security? Fine by me. Let the workers take the ridiculous amount of money they pour into that system every paycheck and let them invest it on their own. Shoot, even mandate that you must invest a certain percent of your income somewhere if you're worried about people not doing it. Education? Well, see above. If you're in the U.S., you pay out the nose for it. Healthcare.. not really sure how taxes are related to that.
That's because you don't plan to retire. You plan to commit seppuku when that time comes, right?
Easy one first:
Also, remember that the Government already gets more in taxes then the oil companies make in profit per gallon of gas.
Also, remember that the oil companies already get more in revenue than the government earns providing roads to drive on.
You compared REVENUE to PROFIT. Not the same thing. Oil companies profit on the sale of gas. The government spends more money building roads than it gets in gas taxes, so it's operating at a LOSS.
Since the oil companies can't make any money on gas unless the government builds and maintains roads, the government should increase gas taxes until road spending is paid for. Alternatively, the government could also put a special tax on oil company profits so that the government is no longer subsidizing the oil company's business.
What oil subsidies and tax loopholes do you refer too? Oh, maybe its the accelerated depreciation and manufacturers tax credits....something just about all corporations who produce something can get.
The problem is that the oil companies are getting those credits WITHOUT PRODUCING ANYTHING!
The biggest culprit is allowing oil companies to take a capital depreciation expense on the value of the oil that they remove from the ground. That makes no sense at all. The way a capital expense is supposed to work is a business spends $1 million on capital and then gets to write off that $1 million over the lifetime of the equipment. If you allow that deduction to be accelerated, then the manufacturer might write off that $1 million in the first year. Either way, the manufacturer still actually paid $1 million for the asset.
What oil companies do is they find some oil, then declare that oil to be worth $1 million dollars, and then as they pump the oil out of the ground, deduct the value of the oil taken from the ground from their taxes. Problem: They never had an expense with acquiring the oil! It's an expense deduction with no expense, i.e. a handout.
It's like finding a winning lottery ticket on the ground worth $1 million/year for 30 years, and each year you're paid $1 million, claiming a $1 million capital expense deduction on your taxes.
It's a handout, period.
paintball
Electric cars still need license plates. And repairs. And they get sold and the mileage is recorded at the sale.
No need to pay the tax at the pump at all. It's a design that retains the current model that works for fuel-consumption taxation. Poorly thought-out.
It won't be soon but, at some point, enough cars will be electric that we will need an alternative to the fuel tax. But electric cars don't go to filling stations which makes a mileage tax based on visits to filling stations kind of pointless.
I should take this opportunity to you point out that Americans pay taxes on electricity already.
Of course you can.
Just spend less money.
So when the cost of bread and water goes up, then you have to do what? Spend even less money? Find something else to cut from your budget? If you know the cost of bread and water will go up every 3 years for possibly the rest of your life, but you refuse to accept a promotion which would increase your revenue so that you'd have more to spend, then eventually your cost of bread, water, would cause you to lose most of what you currently own. This doesn't work, so this is why people take promotions, this is why corporations seek to boost profits. Why shouldn't individuals and governments seek to boost profits by increasing revenue? Profit for government is tax revenue, not cutting costs. Just like corporations that only cut costs, don't create jobs and end up outsourcing the jobs to cut costs, end up laying people off to cut costs, etc.
It's how I fixed my deficit, while my wages held steady. Canceled the cable, canceled the cellphone, turned off the heat, et cetera. Same principle applies at the national level - just cut spending on unnecessary bullshit (like wars, studying butterfly sex, renovating congressional offices, and so on).
It doesn't work that way. It's the unnecessary BS that creates the middle class and allows private sector corporations to have people to sell products to. So unless you plan to sell your products to the chinese, then you have to accept that all most profit and increase revenue for the economy to properly grow. This includes the government, it too must increase revenue as it is part of the economy, provides jobs, buys products from private corporations, etc.
I think you might want to check your sarcasm meter. It seems to be broken.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Trucks are not tax exempt AT ALL.
The federal tax on diesel fuel is 24.4 cents per gallon. Every truck in the country pays that tax.
States also tax diesel fuel. Some states allow exemptions to this tax, or to sales tax on diesel fuel, under certain circumstances. So if you see "Tax Exempt" at a truck stop, it's an exemption from some state tax, NOT the federal tax.
Note that you can get diesel fuel for non-trucking use (like farming, generators, etc) without paying the federal tax. This is known as "Ag Diesel" or "Dye Diesel", as any diesel sold without paying the federal tax is actually died to a different color. If you're driving a truck and get pulled over and are caught running dye diesel, you will face some major, major fines.
paintball
Because the only purpose -- the real purpose -- is to track your every move.
Road tax is only a convenient excuse.
Because mass of the vehicle has a hell of a lot to do with how much damage they do. Mass per axle needs to be taken into account as well as total distance driven.
Which kind of brings us back to the idea of this as basically a more complicated equivalent of a gas tax...
I mean, heavier vehicles will tend to have poorer fuel economy, and obviously if you drive farther you use more gas. If you accept also that it's desirable to encourage people to drive more efficient vehicles when possible, then it really seems like a gas tax is the way to go.
But it's unpopular to do anything that raises the price of gasoline. I suspect that may be why they're looking at alternatives. Tax basically the same thing, but measure it differently so people won't curse you every time they go to a gas station.
Bow-ties are cool.
I don't think tracking people to tax them is going to fly; a yearly tax based on how much a vehicle weighs would be simpler.
gas tax is already fairly direct tax based on amount driven.... amiright!?
Actually, charging by the mile would be extremely easy to do. You just buy a sticker that's good for, say, 10,000 miles. Punch out the numbers for the start mileage and stick it to your wind shield. When your 10,000 miles is almost up, buy another one. Could buy them at your local gas station.
Get pulled over with an invalid sticker and pay nasty fines.
It seems, however, if the concern is wear and tear from electric vehicles, the first thing the government should do us stop subsidizing the purchase of electric vehicles through tax credits.
paintball
This is like when ISP's employ traffic based payment per megabyte instead of a monthly fixed fee. It usually ends up being more expensive than it should be.
"The office would be required to consider four factors — the capability of states to enforce payment, the reliability of technology, administrative costs, and 'user acceptance"
I can see problems with the Reliability of the Technology happening after the trial runs. For some reasons a lot more cars are being stuck by lightning.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
seriously, rtfa, it's not an Obama proposal
Just because someone tells you "bend over", it doesn't make it any nicer for what comes after.
Screw that.
Looks like I will just have to use a digital speedometer re-calibrator (about $90 and 15 minutes to install) and/or speedometer cable gears (about $10) to correct for differential gears and tire sizes I don't have. Drive 100 miles, indicate 10. Multiply everything by 10 to keep track of speed and true mileage. Get stuffed, greenies. Alternative energy is the future. Oil is now.
wrong wrong and wrong.
Stop trying to lump all taxes together and try and make sense for budget shortfalls.
Federal/state gas tax should go straight for maintaining roads and bridges. Cars use less gas because they're more economic and lighter. Lighter cars do less damage to the roads therefore the issue is basically a tax shortfall based on less road damage which means less money needed to repair them. It should not be thought of as less money going into healthcare.
Driving is not a luxury in many places and is the only form of transportation. I'm sure grandma will appreciate the times you need to drive her to the hospital in your car instead of waiting around to take her to the hospital on a bus.
No offense to anyone, but I have my doubts that this is real.
A gas tax wold be far simpler and beneficial, but politicians of both parties have known for decades that it would be political suicide. The tax from the blurb would be even more offense to Americans and President Obama is not dumb. On top of that he is easing into reelection mode. In other words, all common sense points away from this being real.
Remember that con-man Andrew Breitbart editing that speech from the African American woman from the USDA to make it sound like she was screwing white people over even thought she was speaking against it?
Give me an aluminum foil hate, but I wouldn't be surprised if something similar wasn't going on here.
Just require people to identify themselves when they purchase gas and track it nationally. Probably though your national id/drivers license though you probably won't have to actually show it unless your paying cash because you'll just link it to your credit card. No need to track miles and people are rewarded for efficient vehicles. It still only amounts to a gas tax but you'll then be able to tier the tax.
I'm guessing that the real reason for the study is that the writing is on the wall and electric cars are the future so they can't continue to collect highway taxes through gas anymore.
I think a better and simpler system would be requiring employers to pay every for commute time for which the government gets a cut. You are paid a percentage of what you would have been paid for the same amount of time at work. It would motivate businesses to move to areas with closer affordable housing, usable mass transit, and better highways.
There is sooo many issues with overweight vehicles that there are no single way to ascertain their costs and contribution to the problem; a tax on static weight won't work. And we have to massively over-engineer bridges and roadbeds based upon the possibility. And, even if enforced, the penalties do not dissuade. Google coal trucks overweight vehicles damage for more.
People on the liberal end of the spectrum tend to view taxation in static terms. The rich have a certain amount. You raise taxes on them 10%, you get 10% more revenue. Life is way more complicated than that.
Wealth flees. People cut back in other areas. People hire less. And a bunch of other unintended consequences we can't foresee.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Cripes, it wants the government to buy and install a bazillion fancy devices and install them on every car in the country? Well, I know one company that would like to see it pass...
Why is it this stupid idea reappears every 6 months or so? Every time it involves some expensive piece of hardware (GPS receivers for instance) that needs to be bought and installed on all umpteen million cars in the country, instead of the far more sensible solution of just having the yearly inspection guy write down the mileage off of the odometer every time you bring your car in and report that along with your results to the government. It won't work in states that don't do safety inspections, but they could work something out (owner just self reports for instance) that's about a billion times cheaper than whatever technological solution someone is trying to create a market for.
I read the internet for the articles.
I know for sure that is an intense lobby made by insurance companies to charge auto insurance by mile, but until now they didn't discover a cheap way to check this kind of data. This will allow them to let the government to check those miles, and they will charge you insurance per mile. This is the only logical explanation that I have for choosing tax/mile instead of taxing gas at the pump.
Roads cost money to build and maintain. Why not charge people based on how much they use the roads.
People who drive more miles pay enough by buying gas @ the pumps. A lot of small businesses already need to use trucks & vans with bad fuel efficiency to haul whatever goods they have, because a little 4 seat electric car isn't going to haul a grand piano or a bunch of extension ladders, 2 by 4s, and scaffolding. These people are already hurting the most from gas. This plan would basically stick it to people that are hurt most by gas prices in order to give the few people who are hurt least by gas prices a price break. That's totally ridiculous.
Spending less is the key. But the higher education loans don't really come out of the "cash flow" of taxes, rather it is a self sustaining program, and it is a good thing that bankruptcy will not discharge the loan. There was a huge sentiment recently that the government should forgive student loans (nullify them or something) so that the students who chose to get them would not have to pay them back . . . which is disgusting to me, and very much like large corporations dodging (legally) their tax obligations. I tried to explain to a few of my friends who were espousing the idea that the payments on their loans were enabling the next round of students to go to school. Yes, it is true that the cost of school could be reduced and that the regents and administrations of universities are getting greedier by the day, but in terms of a cash flow savings it is a small piece of the whole pie. The better place to cut spending would be in Defense . . . we could chop that budget in half immediately, and close a bunch of foreign bases. The state department (and intel) can keep up diplomatic relations. The military industrial complex is bleeding us dry and the budgets only go up. The states can't squeeze much more out of their tax bases and things like basic infrastructure, education, and health care suffer.
Like most legislation, they got it about half right. To be fair that everyone pays for their "wear and tear" on the road they need to tax using "total miles driven x gross vehicle weight". It's not the econoboxes that are tearing up the roads and bridges....its the 18 wheelers which keep getting bigger and heavier every year (they used to be 48')
Same principle applies at the national level - just cut spending on unnecessary bullshit (like wars, studying butterfly sex, renovating congressional offices, and so on).
With the difficulty of getting public funding for science, I think you'll find the butterfly sex study is useful.
driving is a luxury. Just so long as we don't get taxed for the bus, the train, the plane or group transportation.
Why should these individuals be tax-free? I say if car drivers are hit with an additional ~25% per year, then the same thing should happen to metro/bus tickets. Add another 25% tax.
It depends a lot on the city, but it could be that the government saves money if someone switches from driving to using a train/bus -- there's less wear on the road, less chance of an expensive accident to clean up, the person might have to walk a little each way and thus be a little healthier (less sick days, less medical bills), there's less air pollution to pay the costs of, etc.
I think (though I cannot prove it) this is more so to accommodate alternative fuels. As more people go the way of hybrids, electric, bio diesel, etc, revenue is lost in gas tax. So by going to a per mile, the get their money no matter what you drive. No one escapes.
I believe it was in South Carolina, some guy had a car with a bumper sticker saying 100% veggie oil was dragged to court for tax evasion. There are definite cases of people who were making their own bio diesel that were dragged to court for tax evasion. Cause if you are driving on the roads and you did not BUY your gas from a station, you are evading taxes according to the verbiage.
So just get everyone buy the mile. I'm not saying I agree with it, just saying you can give a dog the bone you want, or the dog can take the bone it wants.
The main problem with the gas tax is that, it is the main source of income to fund all transportation infrastructure. Anything the DOT does is paid with these funds roads, bridges, public transportation, including rail and trains. (Yeah, everyone hates AmTrak, but there is still other commuter rail and subway projects that get funded)
As gas prices go up, and electric cars become more popular, new ways to "tax" the user need to be found.
VMT is one idea but I don't think it's the solution, people already making a fuss about their phones tracking where they are. Do you think they are going to like their cars telling the government how many miles they traveled?
Boy, all those electric cars. If only we had some way of measuring electrical use....... oh
To put it more bluntly, lets see how this goes over.
Then comes some sycophants in the press talking it up as a valid method of taxing "electric" vehicles and so on over the next year or so and suddenly it gets floated again. Now if Bush had floated this it would be a screaming shit fit on the left proclaiming how it WAS proof he was aligned with oil companies by taxing alternatively powered vehicles. Toss in the fun that the press and certain politicians who decried four dollar gasoline are silent or worse telling us the benefits of it ... now
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
A few thoughts on this subject (beyond the fact we pay way too much in taxes and the government wastes way too much of it)....
I already pay a mileage tax. Everytime I buy a gallon of gas in California, I pay 37.8 cents in taxes (19.5 Fed, 18,3 state. Every 10 gallons I buy, the Feds make $1.95.
For those who say the tax should be based on fuel economy, we already do. The worse your fuel economy, the more gas you need to buy, thus you pay more taxes.
The only consideration I'll make is one based on weight per tire of the max or average weight of a vehicle, but that would be easier to handle with the registration fees we pay once a year.
One last thought...If a law was put into place that taxed a driver based on actual odometer mileage, a booming business will immediately sprout up to manipulate odometers.
Forget taxing by the mile, tax by weight. That should make extract from the EV owners the gas taxes they are no long paying.
Bearded Dragon
This sounds very, very bad.
In more than one way.
First we already have a gasoline tax. Paying a tax per gallon is a fair good proxy for miles driven. Until we have a non-trivial number of electric vehicles this proposal seems quite unnecessary. At most we might need to tax alternative fuels like ethanol, biodiesel, etc.
Secondly why do we need another agency or more government employees to measure individual mileage? Paying a tax per gallon doesn't need any such new government employees. Even if it is technology based, the vehicle reports mileage, there will be new people to monitor and enforce compliance, identify and deal with those tampering with the new devices or reporting system, etc.
As a bonus a tax per gallon also rewards those with higher mileage vehicles.
As a non-bonus, do we really need a government device monitoring/reporting our vehicles' behavior? Some time after introduction and in order to "save the children" they will probably start reporting bad behaviors like speeding. Perhaps we can pay our speeding tickets at the pump along with this new mileage tax.
What would they expect people in sparsely populated areas to do? Many people must drive great distances for any form of human contact, business, medical or supplies. There are people who have no alternative to an average of 200 mile per day or more.
The thing you linked to is about an exemption for the STATE SALES TAX, *NOT* the federal tax on diesel of $0.244 per gallon. All diesel sold for road use in the US is assessed a $0.244 per gallon federal tax, no exemptions, period.
paintball
How the hell is it OK for you to tax my mileage if I should happen to be driving on private roads?
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Can Politicians subsidize electric cars and then whine about wanting to tax them at the same time....
Why not just eliminate the subsidies and the taxes? Seems they just cancel each other out anyways....
I thought the whole idea of an electric cars at least initially was that you would attract people to buy them since gas and gas taxes would be so high the customer would WANT TO go buy a Nissan Leaf or Chevy Volt. This is why they are subsidized in the first place, so now they are wanting to take the incentive away by adding a mileage tax? Doesn't that discourage the whole idea of wanting to nudge people towards electric cars?
Sometimes I think that all politicians see are the dollar signs in their eyes. They see taxes as money they can use for pet projects and political payoffs so they can buy votes to keep them in power so they can continue to suckle on the teat of the lobbyists.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
No, fuel taxes don't even come close to accounting for road wear caused by larger vehicles. Road wear caused by vehicles is related to the 4th power of their axle weight.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Only in America would we spend money to figure out what is the best way to take money from the people.
Not every mile driven will be on public roads. Will we have to pay these taxes to maintain public roads even if most of our time wasn't spent on them?
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
My paycheck is taxed, my gas is taxed, my phone service is taxed, my home is taxed, etc... Why don't they just take a straight 80% of the top instead trying to sneak little taxes in on everything?
Wake up Sheople!
Just make everything a toll road and solve two problems: taxing by the mile and congestion. I would also tax people who are too slow or who speed dangerously, but that's not the topic. Anyway, the technology is such that you no longer have to stop a a tollbooth. The only issue is how to ensure that everyone has a working transponder (which is probably the same problem with tracking miles).
has anyone done the math to see what the revenue increase from electricity taxes for plug-in hybrids is?
it seems like the correct thing to do is find a way to recoup the revenue "lost" from less gasoline sales, is to tax the thing that is replacing it.
while I have never seen the equipment, it seems like the plugin hybrids use a special plug that can be metered independently. This would allow who ever was lobbying for the mandatory purchase of some electronics to still have a product to purchase. Plus, Electric companies could properly quantify the electricity going to plug-in Hybrids.
Someone should tack on a "Politician Bullshit Tax" to generate funds lost to bad spending, pet projects, and unethical behavior.
This would provide a healthy offset to this bullshit idea.
Now that I think about it, I can disconnect my truck's odometer simply be removing an easily removable fuse!
Obama should understand that vast majority of the goodwill he earned from killing Osama will evaporate faster than a gallon of gas in the Arizona sunshine.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
Whoa, what? You have a seriously strange view of lots of things. First, student lending isn't a goldmine for the government, it's a COST due to the low interest rates and other subsidies. And student loans ARE given out by private banks, my first student loan was from a local-ish credit unions. The banks were up until the Obama administration actually SUBSIDIZED TO DO SO. Second, if the government DIDN'T tax for unemployment benefits, what would you do with unemployed folks who weren't insured? I guarantee you they would start robbing people and stealing to survive if there wasn't any way for them to get a job. Geez, libertarians around here....
Personal budgets are NOT EQUIVALENT to the economy of a currency-producing nation. Imagine if, for example, it was possible to buy so many services on credit that you increased your income? Governments can do that.
You can see them in this thread in abundance. They are the ones calling others libtards, and retardicans. They actually think either republicans or democrats care about them beyond pandering to different demographics to gain votes. Both parties care only about 1 thing: staying in power. They don't care about you. They don't care about the rich beyond getting money from them. They don't care about the poor. They only care about staying in power or increasing the power they hold. Both parties shed massive crocodile tears when the other side does something they can try to spin to their advantage......then when they get in power....they do the exact same thing (Gitmo, water-boarding, tax breaks to groups that provide support to their re-election, bombing innocent people, extra-judicial assassinations, etc.) Both sides' stupid supporters justify it when their side does it, yet the moans and cries and name calling are deafening when the other side does the same stuff.....the only difference being which side did it at that particular time. Republican administration bombs someone and Democrats start crying about the "evil fascist nazi's". Democrats bomb someone you hear mostly crickets from liberals. Democrat administration bombs someone and the Republicans start crying about whatever it is they cry about..... but you hear crickets when their own guy does it. They both target their propaganda to ardent believers who will in turn blindly support their team's actions, even when identical to the opposing team's actions, which they moan and cry about as if someone stole their cookies. Both are too stupid and blind to see it. It's like watching two primitive tribes waring over some idol that's just painted a little differently,but otherwise identical.
In government there is no remainder, same as in big organizations, due to how funds are dolled out. If you don't use all your funds this budget cycle then you won't get everything you ask for next budget cycle. It's a sad system that encourages waste as opposed to efficiency.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
I've never bothered tracking down the people who are pushing this, but the idea's been floating around the states for a few years - somebody was trying to push it in Oregon, maybe five years ago, and also trying to get California interested. The real question is why, and who's backing them.
If you look at the proposals, they require putting location-tracking equipment into everybody's cars. Cars already have mileage-tracking equipment, called "odometers", and states that require annual car registration (like all of them) could get odometer readings when they do that, and there are already regulations about tamper-proofing odometers. When this was a state-level proposal, the argument that you need location-tracking is so that your state can tax miles driven in-state but not tax you for miles driven outside the state - that need goes away if it's a Federal program. Gas tax is a straightfoward low-bureaucracy tracking mechanism; these things would add a lot more bureaucracy that would typically soak up any excess revenue the program generates.
So they're proposing a radical attack on privacy which is an obvious opportunity for scope creep by subpoenas and warrants, and significant increase in costs. Either of the explanations about people who want to get the Feds to mandate people to buy their product or about Feds wanting extra surveillance capabilities could explain it. If it's the latter, I'd really rather they just mandate that everybody carry an emergency smartphone in their car (:-).
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
The Interstate Freeway system provided transportation throughout the US so goods could get from suppliers to consumers in a fast efficient way. Breaking this model will break the economy as well. Tax cuts may well spell the end of American economic dominance, not spurring it on as some would have us believe.
just increase the tax on gas instead
Absolutely the correct answer and it will not happen anytime soon. Short of cutting social security benefits (old people rarely forget to vote), I can't think of a faster way for a politician to get voted out of office than to directly raise the price of gasoline. Seriously, it's political suicide with gas at $4.00/gal and an economy in the dumps even if the republican led house would be willing to consider a tax hike - which they definitely will not.
While I think this "draft proposal" (daft would be a better word) is stupid in many ways, it might be an effort to do an end run around the fact that US voters almost invariably detest any hike in the price of gasoline. Phrased right it would be possible to have the same or simiar effect as a gasoline tax without having an actual gasoline tax. Doesn't make it a good idea but that might be the intent. I shudder at the cost of all the bureaucracy something like this would create however.
I would definitely support a gradually phased in gasoline tax hike. All at once would be too much of an economic shock but if you give people a few years to adjust (buying more efficient cars, etc) it would definitely have some long term desirable benefits. If the price of gas is high enough, CAFE standards become unnecessary because people will naturally seek an economically efficient solution.
http://mises.org/books/roads_web.pdf
Please educate yourself.
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How about leave the system alone, though the actual per-gallon rate will have to be raised as vehicles get more fuel-efficient.
All-electric vehicles of course will escape this, so we will be subsidizing them, as if subsidies are anything new for the highway system here in the U.S.
Eventually, alternative energy will break this, and then you will just track vehicle mileage either when you file your income taxes, or sell the vehicle. Tax on rolling average, and catch up on inaccurate assessments during vehicle sales. Kinda like real estate.
And then, when it becomes too wierd, deploy RFID tags and track vehicle passage here and there, and send a bill.
Yeah, the environmentalists have screwed it up again. Now we all pay.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Yup. There's been somebody trying to push this to the state governments for a few years. I don't know if they're trying to sell a product to get states to mandate it (or now, Feds), or if they're Federal or state cops trying to get a privacy-invasion technology deployed under the guise of tax revenue enhancement. The proposals that the states have gotten have been for devices that are continuously tracking your location (because after all, if you drive across state borders, your state should only tax you for the miles driven inside your state), and just because that argument doesn't really apply for a Federal tax, it's still part of the sales pitch. They're less susceptible to mission creep than you'd expect because they already started as a way-overblown program, so the mission is pre-creeped on arrival.
At a state level, almost all states require annual car registration and usually inspection, so they could just check the odometer then.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Which would only raise the cost of gas, and put us in an even bigger economic bind. I guess everybody on slashdot lives within 5 miles of work. I make over 75,000 a year (USD) drive 35 miles one way to work, and it's already putting a bind on my money. And no I don't have a lot of bills. Just hungry mouths to feed. No credit cards, only one car payment, no cable, just basic household expenses.
Actually, I don't understand why the fuel tax is a fixed value anyway. If it were a % of the purchase price like ordinary sales taxes, then revenue should stay fairly level as prices rise and usage drops.
Doesn't really work like that in the short run. Gasoline prices are pretty volatile in the short run so taxing based on a percentage basis would send tax revenues bouncing around like a caffeinated puppy. It would be REALLY hard to predict the tax revenues. Done on a per gallon basis the revenues are MUCH more predictable because the number of miles people drive is fairly stable in the short run. You can figure out within a reasonable error rate how many miles will be driven next year and the average fuel economy is a known number so we have a pretty good idea how many gallons of gasoline will be consumed to within a few percent. That makes for a stable tax revenue stream which is what you want.
This may be OK for drivers who are close to services and do not commute long distances. How about people in the country who live many miles from services. For me to shop,I drive 75 miles round trip. I am on SS and for me this would be catastrophic. It is just another way to keep us poor people under control by the government. How about less spending and not more taxes? I will not vote for anyone who supports this legislation. Who are the people who support this. What are their names? These are the kind of people we DON'T need in our government!! Bud Tyler
If those pages were up on Wikipedia, there would be so many [citation needed] that they'd be unreadable.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
> They know, knew, and understand that you cannot fix a deficit or reduce the
> national debt without raising taxes.
That is just insane. Go find any source of information you prefer and find graphs of revenue and spending over the last few decades. The problem isn't on the revenue side, our problem is we want to spend too fracking much. Trying to solve a problem of uncontrolled spending by finding new revenue ain't going to work. If your spouse is spending like a drunken sailor getting a second job won't fix it, s/he will just see that as a reason to just spend even more. Which, if you will look at the information I just asked you to inspect, is exactly what has happened EVERY time we have tried to solve the deficit by raising taxes. Even though the taxes are almost always part of a 'grand bargain' to cut X dollars of spending for every Y dollar of new taxes what actually happens is the taxes are increases and spending goes UP instead of down. EVERY. TIME. This last showdown was the first time in memory that spending will actually go down (mostly smoke and mirrors but WTH) instead of the rate of growth being trimmed. Even the sainted Reagan never cut the size of government, only the growth rate.
The problem is Democrats (with the support of too damned many RINOs) have spent the last century making increasingly expensive promises that couldn't be paid for. All those guys back in the 60's and 70's yelling "we are heaping impossible commitments of debt upon our children and grandchildren" were right. Just glad most of the hippie scum who supported the creation of this monster welfare state are retiring just in time to bear the brunt of their own stupidity. Thank Obama for ramping Bush's insane spending to levels that defy vocabulary itself for bringing the trainwreck from twenty years in the future to 'any day now.'
> So all their talk about cutting and tax reduction is impossible on paper, basic math
> will tell you less revenue in means less to spend with. Less input = less output.
Math says nothing of the sort. The tax rate cuts (I'm assuming you are parroting leftie talking points against Ryan's plan) are offset by elimination of deductions to make them revenue neutral. However by simplifying the code significant economic growth is possible which of course helps the govenment two ways: it increases tax revenues and decreases income transfer payments to the unemployed.
Here is what appears to be an iron law. After varying tax rates all over the map over the past century we have had an income tax it appears impossible to collect more than 18-20% of GDP, it spikes to 20% and falls back.. The more you raise rates the more people have incentives to avoid taxation at the highest rates and rich people can afford lots of tax advice, especially when a crapload of money is at stake. Again, you can look this up on the Internet thingie. Since we are already banging up against that limit talk of increasing income taxes is just stupid. Yea you can 'punish the rich' and all that but the revenue won't show up in the treasury, meanwhile because CBO is a bunch of 'tards the revenue will have been expected and spent because of the utterly broken static scoring model they insist on using. More likely is higher rates slow the economy and you get lower revenues. So Yea, bigger deficits!
Democrat delenda est
but not necessarily unchangable.
I think the real complication is that every politician is just too scared to add or increase fuel taxes because people are too stupid to react in a non-emotional way to higher fuel prices.
Unemployment? Well, that's insurance more or less. You pay an unemployment tax, and then if you later become unemployed you can collect. If the government didn't have a monopoly on that, too, I'd probably pay a private insurer for the same thing.
Oh.. indeed. Except you _don't_ pay an unemployment tax. The company you're working for does. And it's an insurance premium, since the cost to them is proportional to how many claims were made because of them.
Make it voluntary. Then everyone here clamoring for people to pay even more taxes can happily pony up and hope the money is used for infrastructure.
Meanwhile, the rest of us can continue paying the existing gas tax and save up to later purchase things to improve our quality of life...a
Taxing like you propose would be counter-cyclical: as gas prices get higher and drag on the economy, the tax would get bigger and make the effect even worse. A more efficient system would be pro-cyclical, so that the tax would increase as gas got cheaper.
It's not a terrible idea in theory, because as cars become more efficient there is less money collected in gas taxes, but you still have to maintain the roads and better fuel economy does not equal less wear on the roads.
However, if you intend to put a GPS tracking device on every car to implement it, that's where I draw the line. I'm as liberal/progressive/Democrat as they come, but I STRONGLY oppose any governmental program to track our driving. Oh they'll swear up and down that the data won't be used for surveillance, but when has law enforcement/FBI/CIA EVER turned down access to tracking methods or databases? And is it really cost-effective to put a $100-200 GPS on every vehicle in the country?
People ask "don't you trust your government"? Not in general - about some things, but not about this. I hated that Bush started illegal warrantless wiretapping and wholesale monitoring of internet traffic, and I hate that Obama is continuing it. Don't get me wrong, I'm a strong Obama supporter, but wrong is wrong no matter which political party does it.
As others have already commented, there's already a device in every car that tracks mileage driven - it's called an odometer. Just have the odometer read whenever you renew your registration, have your yearly inspection, or whatever your state requires. If making people give a lump sum all at once is a hardship, fold it into your yearly tax forms or something, maybe let people pay their mileage taxes they owe monthly or something. Keep It Simple, Stupid!
Considering how far you had to reach to make that analogy, I'd have to say they drag on the ground.
The deficit is larger than the entire discretionary budget, unfortunately, so gp was correct that no amount of cost reduction will be sufficient to balance the budget.
You, however, don't have the same expenses as the federal government. For example, we promised Social Security, Medicare, Medicade and interest on the national debt. That's money we HAVE to spend. The problem is that the Federal government is taking in LESS that that, so no matter how much you cut discretionary spending, it won't be enough to balance the budget.
Exactly which earmarks? Ones for roads and bridges, or for a cheese museum out in Jersey?
while my wages held steady
Ah. Well, can we roll back the last 30 years of tax cuts on the rich then?
This belongs in the "good-luck-with-that" department.
They know, knew, and understand that you cannot fix a deficit or reduce the national debt without raising taxes.
Uh, or you know, increase efficiency, reduce waste, reduce corruption, etc.
> Imagine if, for example, it was possible to buy so many services on credit that you
> increased your income? Governments can do that.
But not for long. First comes inflation and if the government doubles down on the stupid and keeps doing it long enough it progresses to hyperinflation and collapse. TANSTAAFL.
Democrat delenda est
and unfortunately driving is a luxury
Not when you live in places like Atlanta, where the mass transit system is so fucked, you can't get where you need to go on time and for most of the metro area, you can't even get mass transit. Let's lay it out for you like this.
Atlanta has 1 large mass transit system called Marta. Marta operates above and underground rail systems. Here is the map. That nice grey oval surrounding the system is I285 aka the perimeter. Now, you would think that this system would cover the areas. It doesn't.
Where I live, only a few miles outside of the perimeter, there is no public transportation. None. To even use the system, I have to drive from my house to inside the perimeter, park at a station and then ride to 5-Points which is the hub station. Then catch whatever train I need to that will take me as close as I can get to my destination, then catch a bus or hoof it to where I need to go. This sounds all well and good, except that for me to get from the closest train station to me is roughly a 20 min drive, then between waiting on the train to show up, ride to 5 points, swap trains and ride north, it can take upwards of 2+ hours.
When I lived in south Fulton, in order to be at work at 7am, I had to catch a 4:45am bus, take an hour ride to the station, then 40 odd mins to get to downtown. VS a 15-20 min drive 30, if there was traffic.
So saying it's a luxury for a place like NYC where I have lived in the past, sure. No car needed in most places, and cabs are everywhere. But in other places, you are completely fucked without a car.
If you can drive up the cost of transport, it's nearly the same as having high tariffs from state to state, or internationally without funning afoul of the WTO.
Be it higher transport taxes or higher fuel cost, it has the same effect.
So install meters on the home charging stations - sure some can skip the tax by rigging up their own charger, but this won't be any worse than those who use "farm equipment" gas in their cars.
And they have tolls everywhere. So they are already taxing everyone based on mileage.
Adding yet another tax that accomplishes the same in a more complicated and expensive manner is bloody stupid.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
I just spent my last mod point, wish I had saved it for you.
Short, sweet, and very, very correct.
Just think of what the country would look like now if McGovern had been able to carry this through.
A couple states proposed something like this, but they wanted to implement it via a mandatory GPS tracking device. The excuse for not tying it to the odometer had something to do with not wanting to tax for travel on non-public roads.
Really this GPS based solution is just a way to get the government GPS tracking on everyone's vehicles. There couldn't be any privacy concern here, could there?
Since "excise" means: "an internal tax levied on the manufacture, sale, or consumption of a commodity", doesn't that mean "excise tax" is redundant?
Listen to this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAvQSkK8Z8U
then read this:
http://www.mgexperience.net/article/nice-drive.html
We already get charged by the mile, its part of the built-in feature of paying taxes on fuel and how it works.
Now, we all don't pay the same amount i agree. But if you are driving a more efficient vehicle, shouldn't you get a bit of a break anyway?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
In my state the Metro (train and subway) is losing money hand-over-fist. The only thing that keeps it viable is Gas Tax. If half the people decided to stop driving cars, thus reducing gas tax revenue by half, the metro system would collapse from lack of funds to stay viable.
As for pollution, study-after-study shows trains are no cleaner than if all the passengers rode in 25 mpg sedans. Why? Because trains are 95% coal-fired.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
>>>we promised Social Security, Medicare, Medicade and interest on the national debt. That's money we HAVE to spend.
Not according to the Supreme Court ruling of 1936 which stated SS is a tax, and like any tax, it may be discontinued whenever congress feels like it. There is not "have" about it. (Of course if the programs were discontinued there'd be a revolt, just like what's happening in Greece.)
As for saving these programs, I'd make a few modifications that would reduce costs by half:
- raise the age to match the current life expectancy (just like when SS was created). That's 79 if I recall correctly.
- exclude anyone with a lifetime income over 10 million (i.e. the rich people like Gates, Trump, or your company's CEO).
- SS, medicare, et cetera is supposed to benefit the working class, not the wealthy class who already have tons of dollars are their disposal. Just like Welfare and Food Stamps.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
In ol' South Africa, the Iron Curtain, China, The Soviet Union, Cuba, etc. people could only move or travel with specific permits and licenses from the Government.
In the US, they're just making it too annoying, uncomfortable, and unpayable. With taxes. At least they're not raising the price of gas. And the Dollar is still strong. (*Hacking Cough!*)
Currently it is a fixed value per gallon, so they do not get additional revenue as the price per gallon goes up. Changing to a percentage of the purchase price would help when gas prices go up, but hurt when gas prices go down. With a percentage, there would have been huge fluctuations in the revenue they would have collected over the past 3 years as gas bounced between $4 and $1.50 and $4 per gallon. But with the current fixed rate per gallon, their revenue has dropped as people have driven less and people have bought more fuel efficient vehicles.
There will be no way to effectively police this most ridiculous idea.
We are going to turn into a nickel & dime society.
We are going to be charged by how much we use, instead of just flat rates for everyone.
As in, the government is going to nickel & dime us every time we do something.
Of course, if we look it it logically, it's fair. People that use their cars more, should pay more money for it. They are polluting more, they are using the roads more. They are using the gas supply (though they pay for it) up quicker.
I don't drive, so this doesn't affect me. I shouldn't care, since it makes sense.
But I do not see this sort of thing stopping. Which may not be a bad thing, but if we are going to do all this trouble ( and it will be trouble, keeping fucking track of how many miles cars go, etc), why don't we just take back most the wealth from the rich, call it a "fuck you, you have too much money, we need it tax) and just call it even?
Be seeing you...
Fundamentally, the problem is that the States maintain transportation infrastructure. Although they succeed (somewhat) at repairing the roads, State governments have the same problems as all governmental institutions; namely, inefficiency and lack of accountability. Private organizations, by contrast, do not suffer from these issues.
Before the 1950s, almost all roads were handled by private companies. They used a number of business models to profit; for instance, they established tolls (toll roads) to fund themselves. Instead of obtaining money through mandatory gas taxes or tax by mile systems, the organizations created systems that were voluntary, simple, and non-coercive: three qualities that the current and proposed governmental solutions do not have.
I can't see any reason to implement a tax like this over a gas-based tax except to encourage fuel inefficiency. Can anyone point out other benefits? There are several obvious disadvantages to this. A few off the top of my head are:
1. It encourages fuel inefficiency
2. Costs more to meter and collect (less efficient collection method)
3. Will take longer to implement (a new system / procedure will be needed to meter and collect revenues)
Looks like this might be done just to help out the poor oil companies. What are we going to do next give them subsidies during the time they are the most profitable entities in the history of the world? Oh wait, we're already doing that. Have to love our elected officials (democrats and republicans).
Republicans want to have their cake and eat it too. They know, knew, and understand that you cannot fix a deficit or reduce the national debt without raising taxes. So all their talk about cutting and tax reduction is impossible on paper, basic math will tell you less revenue in means less to spend with. Less input = less output. The only question is who is going to pay the taxes when implemented.
Hey, let's double our tax collections - everybody pays TWICE the amount in income tax as they do right now. We still would have added $800 BILLION in debt this fiscal year.
Revenue isn't the big problem; it's down ~10% relative to historical levels. Spending, however - as a share of GDP - is up 30%. It IS the spending that's the problem right now, not revenue. Double the income tax and we're still nearly a trillion dollars in the hole.
A little perspective - our deficit this year is greater than the entire GDP of Canada. Seriously. So unless you want to raise taxes on the population BEYOND the entire GDP of Canada, we need to cut spending, and cut it dramatically.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
If you need a fuel tax for electric cars, then tax electricity. What's so hard about that?
As a side benefit, you'd also make energy consumption a headline issue for consumer electronics and electric goods.
I propose a tax on rich people with too much time and not enough brains, to tax their apparent unlimited supply of bad ideas. To be fair the tax would be half the value of their stupid idea, with a bonus for witty ideas. I suggest we call it the Half-wit tax.
There's also the yearly fees we pay for our cars too.
how about a tax that is
tax = (miles)^n X (1/mpg)^y
where the exponents n and y are greater then 1
Now that would be something I could (seriously) cheer for; get all those scum with their hummers and big pickups and SUVs off the road
The current tax is placed on gas. But it is only a matter of time before car will stop using gas. ( Or used so little of it. ) Road still need to be maintained.
The problem here is not the mileage tax. It's the way they want it implemented... as in "we are tracking your car in real time" kind of stuff.
It's bad enough that they are doing it with cell phone. But since you are not allowed to use cell phones while driving, you should turn them off.
This country's addiction to fossil-fuel-intensive travel is inappropriate and unsustainable, and actively fucking the environment of the entire planet from multiple directions. This conspiracy to make travel undesirable/expensive might actually be in the service of a greater good.
Or it could just be about good old totalitarian control, restricting the movements of the slave class.
Most likely both.
Knowledge != Intelligence
The implication of the tax is that these people choose to drive for a long time.
People who don't live centrally are generally going to be hit for their daily commute. Yeah, it may take a swipe at people that drive despite viable alternatives, but those that drive out of necessity are going to be hit hard too. I'm personally more of a fan of incentives to drive people to conservation than a whip that doesn't yet know how many and who it's going to hit.
So much for our road analogies when fighting Usage Based Billing :(
I actually did some work on my (former) employer's response to several Dutch government requests for proposal, focusing on how to deploy and secure all of the GPS tracking devices that were going to be placed in vehicles in order to compute the usage taxes.
Then a new government came into power and shelved the whole thing. If we're smart, we wont' even start. It's hugely expensive and invasive. Much better to meter the fuel and tax the vehicles, with extra taxes imposed on large commercial vehicles (as is done now). Yes, this is going to get a little harder when electric vehicles are common and people plug their cars into the power grid rather than filling them at gas stations, but I still think it'll be a lot better to start taxing electricity more -- particularly electricity that might be used to power vehicles -- than to install tracking devices in all our vehicles.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
You have a job that is unique, then.
Most American's can not say that 95% of the year they drive for work.
(pizza delivery is out of the picture)
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
Maybe it's different in other states, but in California you have to get a smog check every couple years. You bring your car in, the stick a sensor up the tailpipe (the car's) and you find out if you meet emissions standards. And the reporting back to the DMV is all electronic. Just have the smog check guy write down the car's mileage. The DMV or other government computer calculates the distance traveled in the last 2years, calculates the tax, and distributes it over the next two tax years. If the car is sold/bought/retired the mileage is recorded at title time and the old owner pays for new miles and the new owner for miles since. Of course, you will be screwed multiple ways when any solution goes into effect: Paying your own tax, and then paying the taxes of the bsuinesses you deal with since they have to pay more too. Remember when gas prices went up and then delivery fees started to increase? You'll pay the tax over and over again through various channels.
As for pollution, study-after-study shows trains are no cleaner than if all the passengers rode in 25 mpg sedans. Why? Because trains are 95% coal-fired.
Assuming your city doesn't use old-fashioned steam trains, trains produce almost no pollution in the city (there is iron dust from wheels/rails, but that's not thought to be harmful, and dust from brakes, which could be -- although friction brakes are only used for the final bit of stopping a train).
Cars pump nitrous oxides, sulphur oxides and unburned hydrocarbons into the air. The power plant does this on behalf of the trains, but at minimum it's away from where people live.
I agree with this 100%. Roads wear out based on the weight and distance traveled, not on the amount of fuel used.
Of course, the problem with the US is that they will enact a new pound-mile tax, but not abolish the per gallon tax. After all, they'll do whatever means more money for them and less money for us.
But electric cars don't go to filling stations which makes a mileage tax based on visits to filling stations kind of pointless.
They have to recharge somehow.
So, you make "electric filling stations" which are no more than a specific kind of plug, authorized by the Gov, with which they can monitor the recharge amount and apply a tax on that.
In this fashion, they can continue the idea of the fuel tax, without taxing my home electricity used in a non-vehicular purpose.
This will also work when they finally come up with an electric-based heavy load vehicle, as it will have to recharge more often, or for longer times. So the heavier vehicles will still compensate for the damage to the roads cause by their weight.
and that is the true rationale behind this proposal. No more starting your bankrupted dustbowl life over in sunny California.
just curious; do your countries also feature road side signs sporting giagantic numbers showing the current price of fuel, or is this just a US oddity?
I wonder about the psycholigical effect of these literally and figuratively huge numbers - especially in light of the political leanings of those producing both the raw feedstock and finished product.
At least the gasoline taxes encourage driving more fuel-efficient vehicles.
Which in turn reduces the amount of money the gubment can collect on fuel taxes. The pay-as-you-go tax probably has more to do with more fuel efficient vehicles and electric-powered vehicles more than anything else. They see the projected numbers and are scrambling to maintain at least what they are collecting now.
>>>The power plant does this on behalf of the trains, but at minimum it's away from where people live.
Yeah it's a good thing that power plant pollution only affects the suburbanites/farmers that live next to it. They don't matter. It's also good that pollution doesn't drift on wind currents from rural america eastward to Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, etc. (Oh wait - it does.)
I'm not buying your "it's okay to pollute the countryside" argument. Can you tell? ;-)
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
would be to make money, without being blamed for "high gas prices", because the country will vote out politicians for high gas prices. but what it would really accomplish is reduce the amount people drive. higher gas prices means higher cost to drive. higher cost to drive means people drive less. means they won't be making any money. which means they will simply introduce additional legislation to attempt to make it up elsewhere. and round and round we go. now I'm dandy with people driving less. gasoline prices in the U.S. are depressed due to many reasons. with a financial reckoning that is still due this country, that will make 2008 look like a flag football game vs an nfl playoff game, gas prices will approach $8/gallon. then this mileage tax is going to look like a real fucking stupid idea. democrats and republicans are mettle around with legislation, but it's all futile, because their legislation is at the very top layer of userland. the problem is the kernel. it tries to repair itself, but mettlesome foreign, fiscal and domestic policy ensure that the kernel cannot fix itself.
If they care about road conditions, they should ditch all fuel and mileage taxes and institute a tire tax. Tire wear and life is based on usage and vehicle weight. When someone buys a 50k mile tire, charge them the road maintenance cost for 50k miles. They could even boost the tax rate on tires with higher load capacities.
>>>The power plant does this on behalf of the trains, but at minimum it's away from where people live.
Yeah it's a good thing that power plant pollution only affects the suburbanites/farmers that live next to it.
Yes, it is. A few people living next to a single power plant is much better than tens or hundreds of thousands of people living in a polluted city.
In the USA it must be easy, you have loads of pretty-much-empty land.
I'm not buying your "it's okay to pollute the countryside" argument. Can you tell? ;-)
Most people think this is a no-brainer, so I think you're arguing for the sake of it. Are you arguing it's OK to increase the total amount of pollution, and have it in the city?
The usual suspects are overthinking the issue(s).
If we are trying to incentivize fuel-efficiency, increase the tax for less fuel-efficient vehicles. Forget the notion of if the car is an SUV or a sub-compact, or by how many cylinders or displacement (like they do in Europe). Go strictly buy MPG. My Mazdaspeed 3 is a small 4 cylinder "economy" car, yet it gets about 18mpg, because it has 264 hp and is turbo charged. I can get similar fuel economy from a V8 Mustang GT, but it would be taxed to death by short sighted European policies.
If we are trying to charge large heavy vehicles more for road damage, then do that.
If we are trying to do both, then it should be a factor of miles per driven plus weight of vehicle with some sort of control for the fuel economy of the car.
Or, we could go with the "flat" tax we have now.
As more and more fuel efficent cars hit the road (CAFE for cars it is 27.5mpg in 2010, 30.2 in 2011, 39.0 in 2016) the amount of fuel tax collected per mile of operation is droping, but the cost to maintane the roads is not. Add in electric & hybrids like the Volt (One of the first buyers has put 4800 miles on his Volt and used 8.5gal of fuel to do it), and the funds drop even more.
A new source of tax income is needed that effects all people equally. You drive 100 miles a month, pay little, you drive 100 miles a day, pay more. Makes sense to me. Gearing it toward weight of vehical would also make sense. Higher rate per mile per thosand pounds, so a gas ICE motorcycle pays less per mile then a fully electric Rolls Royce.
This is simple. We already register our cars. The registration already knows what type of car we register, how many miles, etc...
Why spend any money to create a "task force". Just tax everyone 1 penny a mile for cars, 2 pennies a mile for SUV & Trucks, 4 pennies per mile for large trucks. Someone who drives 10,000 miles a year (the average) pays $10 to $20. Sure, some one who drives $40,000 miles a year pays $40-$80. Make it so this tax is not deductible from the federal tax so the government can actually keep the money. Multiply that by the 100 million car owners, and now America gets 2-4 billion dollars a year.
Those who use the roads most pay for the roads the most.
Taxing miles is a can of worms. City miles probably cost more in infrastructure repairs so a straight tax per miles would unfairly hit rural communities and highway drivers unless some way of tracking where the miles were accumulated is included. Tearing around corners and hitting potholes at 50 mph is probably more wear than a cautious driver so some way of monitoring how the miles were driven would be needed. This idea easily leads to impinging on individual freedoms.
But tires will wear out more quickly the rougher the vehicle is driven. Seems fair to me. Seems cheap to implement. And seems to keep Uncle Sam's nose out from where it shouldn't be in the first place.
no no no! they wanna use "technology" and mandate a gps device in every vehicle to track "how far" you go.
If you love an idea, set it free, in the form of an deniable "early draft."
If it comes back to you, it was meant to me.
If it doesn't come back to, engage in an arduous, years-long search and destroy mission, then shoot it twice in the head. Use the embedded GPS to guide you.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
There's already a gas tax. There's a highway tax. There's a "Metropolitan Commuter Tax" in NYC, as well as an assortment of other mini-taxes in other municipalities. There are already taxes on everything that has to do with vehicular travel - not to mention all the fees. And the punitive tickets for doing things that were perfectly OK before the raging morons took over the legislative system (i.e. using a cell phone).
Now, let's ponder why would you need to add another tax that specifically punishes those who travel a lot. [paranoia mode on] Could it be to restrict the movements of the masses and force more people to use the public-transit systems? Oh yeah, the transit unions would love that. Could it be to give the government a way to track every vehicle and pinpoint the location of anyone at any time? George Orwell is ecstatic. Could it be to isolate those with "unusual patterns of movement" and investigate them pre-emptively? Could it be to further damage the auto industry by discouraging car purchases, and of course to continue putting GM outside the normal market forces by pouring billions in subsidies into the failed company? And so on, and so on. There's about 50 things I can come up with, but you get the idea. [paranoia mode off]
So, here we have a tax that's completely odious in its essence, breaking so many Constitutional issues that you'd need ACLU's entire army of lawyers to sort it out, and sets up some pretty dangerous precedents.
Yup, yet another Spectacular Achievement(TM) of the Obama Administration.