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."

Comments

Movement won't be a reliable measure

[LoadWB]

Putting an environmental impact fee (tax) on fuel would be a more reliable compensation for your impact than GPS. If I sit idling in my car for a few hours I can burn an entire tank of gas without moving an inch.

For what will the GPS tracking *really* be used?

Re:Movement won't be a reliable measure

[fearlezz]

Indeed. The car's location will be known to the authorities 24x7. Combine that with the fact that all your movements with public transportation are soon tracked with the chip-card, and it means that the government knows where you are any time of the day unless you're walking.

They gotta know where you are all the time

[Colin Smith]

No really. It's for your own good.
 

Antidemocratic

[Znork]

FTA: Eric-Mark Huitema, a transportation specialist with I.B.M ... “To do it you need support of the government, and it needs to happen when there is not an election because there’s always a bit of resistance.”

With people like that, we don't need terrorists hating democracy, we obviously have democracy-haters running the place. Not that it's surprising, but it's even more odious when they're so blatant about it.

Re:This was proposed in Oregon

[skids]

and how would you measure that without a GPS odometer in every car?

Easy. By taxing tires.

Re:This was proposed in Oregon

[Caesar Tjalbo]

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.

Canceled

[TBerben]

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.

Reading comprehension #fail

[antientropic]

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.

Track my car? Just Say No!

[AGMW]

An old school friend was contacted by blackmailers a few years back and they asked for £10000. In return, they said they wouldn't kill his family. He contacted the Police and they eventually caught the people.

There is NO WAY IN HELL he would have a tracker in his car because if anyone was able to break into the system it would make it easier for similar people to track, find, and do god knows what else, to his family. They could _know_ that his car was away from home and his wife's car was at home. They could _know_ that all vehicles were away and therefore the house was empty. And let's not even start to tell me the system is secure because we all know there is no such system!
There are just so many ways the information could be miss-used and abused, when a far simpler way to 'tax by the mile' is to put tax on the fuel.

Tax on fuel: You drive a lot ... you pay more. You drive an inefficient vehicle, or drive inefficiently, you pay more. Simple and cheap to setup, and cheap to run.

Re:This was proposed in Oregon

[realityimpaired]

Compared against the possibility of receiving a bill at the end of the year for my mileage, I'd rather pay the tax on the gas. At least that way, it's amortized over the whole year rather than a lump sum. Quite aside from that, cars that don't have NL plates still use the roads, and they wouldn't be taxed at all under the proposed system, which is hardly fair to the locals.

Re:This was proposed in Oregon

[Smidge204]

Exactly... what's wrong with taxing the fuel?

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=