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Dutch Government To Tax Drivers Based On Car Use
An anonymous reader writes "The Netherlands is testing a new car use tax system that will tax drivers based upon how much they drive rather than just taxing the vehicle itself. The trials utilize a little box outfitted with GPS, wireless internet, and a complex rating system that tracks a car's environmental impact, its distance driven, its route, and what time it is driven as a fairer way to assess the impact of the vehicle and hopefully dissuade people from driving. The proposal will be introduced slowly as a replacement for the current car and gas tax, however it is most certainly controversial and will be a real test of how far environmentally savvy Dutch citizens will be willing to go to reduce the impact of the car."
Not really the fairest way. Cars create very little wear and tear on the highways (They are like 95% of the volume and responsible for 5% of the wear and tear). The two main externalities of cars are pollution which a gas tax can roughly cover, and congestion, which tolls can cover. Per-mile only makes sense where the miles themselves create the externality like heavy trucks and farm equipment.
Tax the fuel.
In the Netherlands? Well, it's possible, tax is only some 60% of the price per liter yet. Fuel price in the Netherlands is already high though.
"I'm not much interested in interoperability. I want substitutability. I want to be able to throw your software out."
This plan was canceled in the Netherlands as one of the first acts of the latest government (Rutte-1). I believe they were planning to increase taxes on fuel as a compensation.
The headline and the summary are pretty much completely wrong: as the NY Times article explains, the trial was two years ago, but the government cancelled plans to introduce "rekeningrijden" (GPS-based metered driving) last year. So it's not going to happen anytime soon - unless the Netherlands suddenly gets a left-wing government, which is unlikely.
The idea is to make people use less fossil fuel
This is exactly the problem. Most of these proposals are coming because such taxes won't work on electrics, or don't generate enough income with higher and higher efficiency gas/diesel vehicles.
There's no political will to increase the fuel taxes, and no easy mechanism to apply them to electric cars.