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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."
and how would you measure that without a GPS odometer in every car?
Easy. By taxing tires.
Someone had to do it.
Doesn't easily extend to electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles. And as vehicle efficiency increases and alternative vehicles become more popular, your tax revenue drops while your costs to maintain the roads remains the same. Gasoline and diesel are also used in non-vehicle engines (generators, farm and construction equipment, small engine tools, etc) which would be paying this tax while not contributing to road maintenance expenses.
Taxing actual road use makes the most sense. You can scale it by vehicle weight and class (since fuel use is not linearly proportional to vehicle weight, while road damage is), create residential, commercial and industrial tiers if you want since a heavy truck that gets 12MPG does more damage than a large car that gets the same. It takes the state of maintenance of the vehicle out of the equation (poor fuel economy due to poor maintenance).
If the goal is to reduce fuel use (and I agree with that goal), we should STILL tax nonrenewable carbon fuels.
=Smidge=