Slashdot Mirror
Oregon Lawmakers Propose Mileage Tax On Fuel Efficient Vehicles
Hugh Pickens writes "Facing a $10 billion revenue shortfall for transportation financing, the Oregon Legislature is expected to consider a bill to require drivers with a vehicle getting at least 55 miles per gallon of gasoline to pay a per-mile tax after 2015 to offset the loss in tax revenue for fuel efficient cars at the gas pump, where the government has traditionally collected money to build and fix roads. Oregonians currently pay 30 cents per gallon, a tax that is automatically added at the pump, but as cars become more fuel efficient and alternative fuel sources are identified, state officials project gas tax revenue will decline. 'Everybody uses the road, and if some pay and some don't, then that's an unfair situation that's got to be resolved,' says Jim Whitty of the Department of Transportation. Opponents of the Oregon proposal say it will hurt a new industry. 'It will be one more obstacle that the industry and auto dealers will face in convincing consumers to buy these new cars,' says Paul Cosgrove, a lobbyist for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers. Other states, such as Nevada and Washington, are also looking at a per-mile charge and a Washington law that would charge electric car owners an annual fee goes into effect in February. Oregon did a pilot study of the mileage tax (PDF) where participants paid 1.56 cents per mile and got a credit for any gasoline tax they paid at the pump. Although initial media portrayals of the system were almost uniformly negative, 91% of test participants preferred the mileage tax to paying gas taxes."
Without GPS, how do they know when you leave the state? And with GPS isn't that a serious privacy issue?
Here in Washington State, they are planning a $100 / year fee for these types of vehicles.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Damn infrastructure freeloaders the lot of them.
Or older cars. Not everyone who drives a gas guzzler is necessarily behind the wheel of a bulldozer.
If computers were people, I'd be a misanthrope.
Or older cars. Not everyone who drives a gas guzzler is necessarily behind the wheel of a bulldozer.
If you drive a car which is "older" enough to be worth driving then it probably gets pretty good mileage. My 1960 Dodge Dart (19.5' long and 6.5' wide... this is the 2-door!) got over 20 mpg on the freeway, say 25 or so. Of course, this was on premium plus octane booster, as it had 12:1 compression... I couldn't afford to drive it today :p
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Increase the gas tax to compensate. Gasoline should already be taxed more highly that it is because of it's numerous externalities.
That will just incent the purchase of higher mileage vehicles, reinforcing a virtuous cycle.
Eventually I suppose the time will come when taxation of high mileage vehicles will be needed, but clearly that isn't now.
Why is it backwards for the state to expect that those that use the roads pay 'their fair share' for them like the rest of it's gas using users?
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
I don't really understand the difference between levying a higher gas tax (which is far easier to implement), and implementing a complicated system for tracking miles driven, and levying this at the gas pump.
Call me stupid, couldn't Oregon achieve two goals of their goals (reducing SUVs, and increased revenue) by simply adjusting the gas tax by the average MPG for cars each year? No crazy GPS+Transmitter system needed, no transition time to a new system, and no invasion of privacy needed...
I don't really understand why people are more amenable to a mile tax system vs gas tax... Unless you have a 100% electric car, you still pay for the additional miles driven, through the additional gas you consume. The only difference is you can reduce your taxes paid by purchasing a more fuel-efficient car...
Check in station? EZ-Pass style detectors tied to the odometer? Some other secret black box? Taxes are the least of the worries for anyone who drives more efficient cars. Suddenly milage (among other things about your driving habits, I'm sure) gets added to the list of things recorded by the state.
If computers were people, I'd be a misanthrope.
They should just have a smaller mileage tax that applies to all vehicles (not just efficient ones) to avoid creating an incentive to have less efficient cars.
How utterly loverly. I hope they are not planning to charge people for not filling gas at all.
Reminds me of the old joke. The opera was so good, they charged me 100 bucks to sit in the balcony and 200 for not attending.
the same people who made it illegal for customers to pump their own gas (every station in Oregon is "full service").
Because driving a high efficiency or electric vehicle should be encouraged, not penalized.
It's backwards to penalize people for conserving oil. This is a very short-sighted strategy.
Bunch of cowboy hippies with shotguns would tear up the Capitol lawn in their Prius's.
Road wear is approximately proportional to the square of the weight of a vehicle per axle raised to the 4th power. The more efficient vehicles typically weigh a lot less, and are costing less per mile in road maintenance anyway.
That's very true. I was just trying to point out AC shouldn't be putting all owners of cars with less-than-excellent gas milage under the bus.
BTW... Dart's coming back this year. Not quite a Dart though. Or really a Dodge for that matter.
If computers were people, I'd be a misanthrope.
and what will you do after conventional drivers are taxed to the point there are no more gasoline cars and no gasoline taxes?
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
They already have the mechanism to subsitute some amount of mileage taxes for some of the gas taxes. Most state already have a "smog-check" requirement where a licenced facility records the odometer reading so you can register your car. They could easily just add a mileage tax to your vehicle licencing fees as a requirement to register your car. If enough states do this, you could even just tie this to the reciprocal licence-plate identifcation toll agreements that states have with each other (to enable them to replace toll takers with electronic toll devices and licence plate readering software) to account for some out-of-state licence plates.
The current gas tax is probably highly regressive anyhow (poor folk driving older cars that get lower MPG on average pay more than rich folks that driver newer cars that get better MPG), so this seems like the progressive thing to do. You probably don't want to get rid of the gas tax entirely (as it has a small amount of incentive for getting cars that get better MPG), but say split the desired revenue collection about 50-50.
HAW HAW HAW HAW HAW HAW HAW HAW!
I predicted this two decades ago based on the Netherlands, which forced into existence natural gas car conversions, then slapped a massive tax on them such that you have to drive about 20,000 km/year before you break even vs. gas tax.
HAW HAW HAW HAW, observe asses in action. It's about the money, fools. And what handing it out can buy, which is votes. Everything else is sophistry.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
The shortsightedness is trying to subsidize one group with another... when the taxed group is one you are trying to reduce the # of.
While today there are clearly more traditional petrol autos than hybrids (or fully electric)... what happens when the scales tip?
Funding the S-CHIP program through tobacco taxes sounds good... until you reach the tipping point when there aren't enough smokers paying the tax.
As I recall Minnesota ran into a similar problem a few years... where vehicle tabs (amongst other things in part) fund the bus system... when the recession hit, quite a few people got rid of their cars and started running the heavily subsidized bus system.
The result? Massive losses to Metro Transit who had to go running to the city & state for piles of cash because the designs of the legislature had worked too well.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Problem is that driving an electric vehicle wears on the road just as driving a gas powered vehicle. Do we let everyone switch to electric or high efficiency vehicles and then let the roads deteriorate until they cannot be used because there's no money from gas taxes to support them?
I'd suggest they put a tax moronic stereotypes conceived purely to excuse oneself from thinking, but then you'd go bankrupt.
Electric/hybrid vehicles should pay less per mile as they do less damage to the roads. An engineer friend told me that road damage is proportional to the fourth power of the weight, so an SUV that weighs 5500 pounds will wear the roads approximately 10 times faster than a hybrid that weights 3000 pounds. It's only fair and reasonable that the Escalade driver pays 10 times the gas taxes, assuming that lawmakers are being honest about what those taxes are used for. Yeah, I know; I had a hard time typing that last part with a straight face.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Why is it backwards for the state to expect that those that use the roads pay 'their fair share' for them like the rest of it's gas using users?
What is a fair share? A Nissan Micra does less damage to the road surface than a Ford King Ranch pickup because the Micra is way lighter so charging all drivers the same flat tax per mile driven is would for example be kind of unfair since the King Ranch tears up the road surface more. If you want to even more fair you can also to take the weight of the vehicle and, it's gas consumption/carbon-footprint per driven mile into account when levying taxes and the Micra wins hands down on all counts. Since this is not so much about being fair or green and rather more about preserving the revenue levels perviously generated by taxing gas guzzling SUVs I can see why people are unhappy. It seems to me that a milage tax wold be unfair unless you at least take differences in vehicle weight into account.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Isn't it more fair to distribute the tax according to use?
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
SUVs are not the gas guzzlers many make them out to be. Newer ones are getting 22 to 30mpg. Most vehicles that use a lot of gas are older cars owned by the poor. Gas taxes, which are quickly turning into the modern vice tax, do just what other vice taxes do: Tax the poor. The people you want to tax, who drive $60k suvs could give a shit less what gas costs.
Back in the 90s there was a panic over water shortages in California so they pushed people to reduce water usage. The program worked so well it cut into the operating budget of the water department so they raised rates to make up for lost revenue. Essentially they are penalizing people for being responsible. It's a horrible message at best. Just raise the gas tax on everyone. Sure the gas guzzlers will keep paying more as they should. This idea of shared burden so you don't single out SUV owners and others that prefer gas hogs like aging Hummers and trucks is nuts. If you are worried about road upkeep raising taxes on tires would make more sense so everyone pays rather than attacking high mileage car owners.
what about plan B build more toll roads / change free ones to tolls.
What are law makers going to do when in ten to twenty years we have self driving cars that they can't give ticket to? "Obeying laws tax" for all self driving vehicles?
That's like Japan when they decided to go on a water conservation program to save both water and money. Showers were installed in bathrooms, toilet cisterns were modified to reduce consumption, storage tanks used to recycle rainwater for gardens. The project was a success, water consumption was reduced by 50%. But the water company had to double rates as they were now running at a loss.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
and let the tiny-dicked losers who drive SUVs and pickups pick up the tab.
Because you forget how things work in government. The rich asshole commuting 50+ miles to work each day in his Mercedes G55 SUV doesn't want to pay his fair share of fuel taxes, instead he wants the people driving the fuel efficient hybrids to pick up the slack. Since he can afford to pay the most in "campaign" contributions, politicians listen to them..
Yes, let's ignore the 2nd law of thermodynamics and stop funding for road repairs. And yes lets make maintenance management a job that someone who attended college (and accumulated tuition debt) to get a civil engineering education can't afford to take. Everyone knows things like concrete design and construction surveying are just a useless waste of money, especially in an area that has a history of earthquakes.
It is quite amazing how downright STUPID Tea Party members can be.
Cars that use NO gasoline should definitely be taxed for using the road. Cars that use gasoline and are high mileage normally achieve that by reducing mass, so not the same wear.
I hate grammar Nazi's.
The problem is how you determine which "fair share" they're paying for. If it's actual wear and tear to the roads, that's pretty much all caused by big trucks or by snow clearing (ploughs and, even worse, salt). Passenger vehicles cause essentially zero wear on the roads compared to those other factors. Fuel efficient cars tend to be even lighter and therefore even less likely to cause damage. You could say that the "fair share" is tied to how much space/time the vehicle occupies. The problem there is that it creates a negative incentive for state and local governments to care about preventing traffic congestion or providing optimal routes for drivers. Those governments already seem to consider driver's time to be irrelevant to cost calculations, so suddenly making it _relevant_ (by positively correlating driver time/distance to revenues) is a frightening thought. You could dismiss that thinking as paranoid, but you would have to ignore all the debacles with things like red light cameras where local governments have intentionally created unsafe conditions at red lights to drive up revenues.
How to pay for roads does become an issue, of course. Raising fuel taxes across the board when some people have much more efficient cars than others seems unfair to the drivers with less efficient cars (some of whom may be unrepentant gas-guzzler drivers, but others of whom are probably too poor to afford a new car). Mileage taxes on fuel-efficient cars are a very bad incentive since conserving fossil fuels is the behaviour a responsible government should be encouraging. Roads and similar infrastructure are the kinds of must-have items that benefit pretty much everyone, even those who don't have cars or drive anywhere, so rightfully could come out of general taxes applied to everyone, rather than just to drivers, but people who don't drive or don't drive very much will scream that they're being forced to pay for everyone else, ignoring the fact that the civilization they rely one wouldn't run without roads. The roads need to be funded somehow, though.
The worst case scenario (barring the big-brother box that tracks your car everywhere and bills based on that) is the government throwing up their hands and selling millions of acres of roadway to a private company (coincidentally run by some cronies) for a dollar and a vague promise of not abusing the position, then letting them run a toll system that makes the old, taxed roadway look cheap, while simultaneously being kept in worse condition and with traffic gridlocked from whatever toll-collection scheme they think up.
just charge per number of miles driven per car. report the odometer reading yearly. drive more, pay more. this will encourage both more fuel efficient cars and living closer to work.
No, this will encourage disconnecting the odometer.
I'm guessing that wasn't on their radar screen...
Awesome idea! Please impose a per-mile tax on fuel efficient vehicles such as hybrids.
By the way, you might want to review your existing $1500 rebate for purchasing said hybrid:
http://www.oregon.gov/ENERGY/cons/res/tax/docs/hybridform.pdf
[reaches into bag of applicable figures of speech]
Let's see:
Left hand doesn't know what the right hand... no, wait...
Rebates giveth, and per-mile taxes taketh... WAIT, NO I GOT IT!
Stop being stupid.
We should tax all foreigners not living in our country.
rewriting history since 2109
the environmental benefits and lower consumption aren't worth anything to these idiots in salem? this is aimed squarely at those who drive plug-in electrics, but those owners SHOULD get a little break (besides the federal credits at time of purchase) for their choice of car to buy.
not collecting enough fuel tax? just raise the per-gallon rate. that's easy and uses existing systems and infrastructure to collect. costs zero to implement, unlike a complicated system of tracking every vehicle and billing for miles driven -- which has it's own privacy issues besides. if road fuel is to be taxed, the existing method of per-gallon taxes collected by federal and state governments are the ONLY reasonable and fair way to go. it penalizes those who drive less efficient vehicles (we DO want people to drive efficient vehicles), or damage roads (larger, heavier vehicles do more damage) while providing an incentive to change to cleaner, more efficient models or to drive less (or carpool, walk, bike, or take public transit, etc).
a combination of a little higher registration fee (for all vehicles, not just high efficiency or electric ones) combined with a modest per-gallon increase should be more than enough to offset the supposed loss in road tax revenues.
at the risk of -1 from oregon residents... oregon could also start collecting a modest statewide sales tax (it doesn't currently have one) to bring in a few extra bucks. they do not need to violate every state driver's privacy by using a costly to implement and administer per-mile tax. but knowing how the masses usually vote, if it comes down to driver privacy + per mile tax vs a small statewide sales tax, voters will choose to be tracked everywhere they go even if it ends up costing them more money. the stigma of a "state sales tax" will lose every time -- and has numerous times before at the ballots, which is why oregon has one of the highest state personal *income* tax rates in the country instead.
Cutting spending is a good idea, but I'm not sure how the public would react to shutting down road lanes and stopping road construction projects until the gas tax fully pays for the roads instead of only 65% of the cost.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Then permanently separate road tax from fuel for everyone. Bottom line - fuel efficient vehicles need to provide a financial benefit to their owners.
"until you reach the tipping point when there aren't enough smokers paying the tax."
So change the rules once you reach the tipping point. What's the problem?
That depends on how much of road damage is due to vehicles and how much of it is due to nature.
Many bicyclists bring up the point that they are so light that they shouldn't have to pay a road tax because they're not damaging the road. Of course, for this theory to hold, we should never have to repair bicycle paths. Yet we do.
While I would agree that the Ford King Ranch pickup does more damage to the road than the Nissan Micra, I would say that a good strong rainstorm with minor flooding does significantly more damage. And that's nobody's "fault."
Coming back this year? They've been on the lots here for months.
I used to get high on life, but I developed a tolerance. Now I need something stronger.
What about the fact that light cars cause much less damage to the roadways than heavy ones? It is generally well accepted that the damage caused to the roadways is roughly proportional to the fourth power of the axle weight (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_axle_weight_rating). Any fair tax system should charge heavy vehicles much more than light ones because the heavy vehicles are responsible for most of the maintenance costs. It is just bizarre that we would encourage people to drive less efficient vehicles that reduce environmental costs and reduce road maintenance costs.
you haven't been to Austin recently.
22-30mpg is crap. I've had better mileage than that for over a decade even on US made autos.
Which means per-mile tax on all autos in order to be fair, not just fuel efficient ones. Sure, it's a bit unfair to gas guzzlers, but why should we be fair to them?
I don't know why you went AC on this, but it is absolutely correct.
Big Rigs (Tractors with Trailers) do the most damage to the road way.
hell most "Big SUVs" still fall into the light duty vehicle category (< 10001 lbs) according to the AFDC.
42 69 6C 6C 20 47 61 74 65 73 20 69 73 20 61 20 77 68 6F 72 65 21
WTF? The physics are well known and understood outside of politics: F=MA. High millage cars have less Mass. Faster roads cost more because of A, it is not difficult to find out the HUGE expense of raising speed limits have on new roads and maintenance. If you are going to tax based upon distance driven, a fuel consumption tax makes sense; however, if you do not consume ANY fuel this approach fails to be equitable. This proposal does not solve the problem and continues the same irrational solution. If one wants to be actually be "equitable," there would be a mass AND an odometer check, (or even GPS tracking.)
In my state we pay car registration tax, sticker renewal tax, plate renewal tax, tax on required insurance, in addition to gas tax. The sticker renewal tax should include an odometer check, since that is yearly and the fee wouldn't be high enough to motivate fraud... More work and effort to do that? yes; however, we waste millions on idiotic yearly stickers (and postal notifications) when we could just pay higher plate renewal tax every 6 years so practicality is already not important.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
The same thing happened in the city of Ottawa
OMG. I hate that idea.
But it seems downright reasonable. Guh.
If the problem was the cars wearing down the roads from driving on them they should just slap a per-mile tax on all vehicles not just high efficiency vehicles.
It's not a penalty, you faint-hearted, lame, shit-eating excuse for a tree hugger. It's an attempt to spread the cost of BUILDING roads fairly across the people who USE those roads. It's about how miles rolled diverge from gallons pumped; not how your little junkmobile sips fuel while barely being able to push its thin-walled, plastic self down an onramp faster than an old lady in a walker, all the while you're bleeding off what little speed your tiny, tiny engine has managed to impart to your sorry amalgamation of mismatched parts as you leave skinny little tire marks dodging squirrels in abject fear of thousands of dollars of body damage.
Personally, I think you little turdlets in your I'm-so-hip tinycockmobiles should be penalized by being run off the fucking road, where your little texting-phones would get driven through your misshapen skulls until they met your little white earbuds in an explosion of angsty fucktard granola-fed brain matter. Then your remains should be fed to wildlife, while your complete piece of shit can't-go-in-snow junker gets crushed and recycled into a respectable 4WD with a bench seat so that adults with functioning gonads can sit together, rather than strapped into your paper-thin faggotty bucketass seats, seatbelts on, faces perpetually ready for immersion in a fucking airbag. We'll hang a rainbow-colored, bio-degradable kitchen apron on a reflector post to celebrate your erasure from the planet.
taxed at the pump for what is supposed to be spent on roads (just goes into the consolodated fund). It's not a particularly fair tax to begin with, but it irks me that I have to pay it to fill my mower/chainsaw/dirt bike... A tax on miles travelled is fairer (implemented here for diesel vehicles) but is still far from fair - even based on vehicle weight. Of course in NZ I can't drive out-of-state - much more complicated in the US.
A few cities near the coast, maybe. But a large part of Oregon very pro-logging, and about the furthest from "green hipster" as you can get.
Only if it takes into account vehicle weight, where large trucks should pay the bulk of the cost.
and let the tiny-dicked losers who drive SUVs and pickups pick up the tab.
I'm an SUV owner. I never planned to be, and during my $500 car phase I had gas sippers, but I got into multiple activities that require lots of cargo room and a good design for heavy objects which I must push in and pull out. (or be able to do so on my back, I'm not strong) Scuba diving (with plans at the time for technical scuba diving) convinced me to get a truck or an FJ Cruiser, and I went FJ Cruiser for security reasons.
I still take public transit to work and only use my SUV on the weekends. It's two years old and the interior looks terrible (dirty, heavily scratched trunk) and the exterior is starting to wear a tiny bit. It's not a fashion or status vehicle. I head to beaches and parks with my various gear, but not much else. I've made long drives with it (I'm on one now) but I needed every square inch of it every day during those times.
Also I am not of the johnsoned half of the population to begin with and I don't have a ton of kids (or any for that matter), but I do carpool with the SUV most times when I'm not diving.
But yeah, keep the stereotypes to yourself mmkay. Some people actually use SUVs for practical reasons.
(that said, I do appreciate all the non-practical users, their volume keeps prices down)
Charisma is the measure of someone's ability to lie with a straight face.
Because driving a high efficiency or electric vehicle should be encouraged, not penalized.
On top of paying less gasoline taxes, they also buy less gas... isnt that encouragement enough?
Oh I get it, there is no end to the depths of "encouragement" people with an agenda will swallow...
"His name was James Damore."
I'd be willing to bet that the trucks would be paying the lion's share of the tax if it were a mileage tax. UPS/FedEx/(any moving company) would end up paying an egregious amount of road tax and shipping costs would go up. Interestingly, this may be seen as anti-competitive since the USPS probably doesn't pay tax on fuel (do they?)
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Spot on. Pay as you go.
However, I see the inevitable rationalization and assessment of a road use tax *on top of* existing fuel taxes.
You read it here first, folks.
One could also assume that a simple bump in sales tax could also cover road travel since people would be driving to the store to buy that item.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Yeah cutting spending is such a crazy idea. The poster above you didn't suggest a single thing you said. He said to cut admin costs and stop paying the equivalent of ditch diggers union salaries. Nobody is saying to shut down the cops/fire/ems/road crews. What they are saying is take a good look at where the money is being pissed away. Eventually you're going to run out of things to tax.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
I drive an EV in Washington and there is a similar tax here. It's entirely reasonable. Like just about every service provided by the government, the ones who use the service ought to be the ones paying for it. For the roads that means drivers (and passengers, but let's assume passengers pay by paying the driver who then pays taxes).
Taxing is hard to make completely right. Ideally you'd pay per mile weighted by traffic heaviness which uses capacity plus some for weight * miles, which wears the roads, plus some tolls for special extra-expensive things like bridges. Tolls we can handle. But the other stuff is a lot of record keeping, and worse, it's an invasion of privacy. Until now we've worked around it by taxing gas as a proxy for mileage, ignoring the difference in time of day and gas mileage. That's been sub-optimal, but not a terrible tradeoff for privacy and costs of keeping records. We who use EVs completely dodge this tax and are basically using the roads free of charge, or at least free of being charged by this avenue. Now I think government is too big, taxes too much, and tries to do too much. But basic infrastructure is something it does and should provide, and the users should be the ones who pay for it. My EV uses those roads, so I absolutely should be charged for it.
Now for pie in the sky idealism. The best way to pay for roads would be something like tolltags on every public road everywhere but with some sort of cash equivalent but cryptographically secure tag that cannot be used to identify an individual. Gas taxes would still exist but they would be a lot lower, not intended to pay for road use but rather intended to pay for environmental damage.
One could also assume that a simple bump in sales tax could also cover road travel since people would be driving to the store to buy that item.
No sales tax in Oregon.
Seriously, this is the only real option. Anything else and they'll just have to monkey with the system again in ten years as cars become even more fuel efficient.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Yep. Still can't pump your own gas here. In my locality, it's more of a job creation program than anything else. No matter how many times I ask, it's a lottery as to whether I'll actually get the premium gas I asked for.
Exactly this.
Where I grew up (Minnesota) the combination of salt and ground heave in the winter does a huge amount of road damage, as I imagine it does in a great many states. Right now the gas tax is helping to offset that, but as vehicles using alternative power sources take over that revenue stream destabilizes. And there isn't a good argument for allowing that to happen; what I'm reading here is a combination of "But I don't wanna pay for it!" and "We should be punishing those gas users in whatever way possible!", neither of which refutes the fundamental truth that the roads need to be funded and the only "fair" way to do so it to tax based on benefit/use to/by the individual.
If you don't want to pay your share and thought your Prius was the ticket to getting out of it, tough. And while encouraging the adoption of electric vehicles isn't a bad goal, the price of electricity combined with falling battery prices and rising fossil fuel costs should do that anyway. Frankly, if you still want to do some social engineering why not do so blatantly with a tax credit/refund on electric vehicles that diminishes as income increases? That way there isn't a regressive tax on the poor, and the goal is clear as day.
While we're at it. Why not base speed limits on the Momentum or Potential Energy (eg how much braking distance and potential for damage is involved), that a vehicle has, instead of one speed to rule them all. I'm pretty sick and tired of having 18+ wheeler Juggernauts sitting right up my sweet ass on the freeways and highways. The car I drive was designed to go safely at a much higher speed, in the traffic conditions.
In my part of Oregon, these are what really damage the roads. You get two nice, pothole ridden tracks along the major roads through town. Rather than taxing those driving fuel efficient cars, tax those tires instead. They're proven to cause damage to the roads.
Is that Imperial gallons or US gallons? They're VERY different!
or, there's people like me that realize that the tax collected is mostly used to pay for road repair, and since I ride a bike that gets 60 mpg, but also weighs next to nothing and as such does next to no damage to the road compared to the 5000lbs hybrids full of batteries, we'd just like the hybrid drivers to pay their fair share for road repair.
In engineering classes about 30 years ago, I learned that road damage is roughly proportional to the fourth power of the weight per axle. Looks like it has not changed. Nothing says that the tax cannot be based on this model.
Note the not all road damage is a result of bending and flexing due to axle weight. You also get chemical changes (salt, water, oil, pollution), thermal cycling (daily and seasonal), topographical changes (a.k.a. earth quakes), and utilities dig-up. You also have non-damage items like mowing the grass, paying for lighting, interest on debt, etc. that must be considered a part of road maintenance. So, you really should not assign all of the maintenance costs to be based on axle weight if you really wanted to be fair about such things.
You may have noticed the signs on the back of trucks that mention something like, This vehicle pays $5,889 in road use taxes per year. According to this study in 2007 the average total tax burden was $13,889 total (for a 80,000 lb truck) and $397 per year for an automobile.
Consider that an 18 wheeler is over 20 times the weight of an average automobile (distributed over 5 axles, though not uniformly). So, ignoring the non-uniformities in automobile weight and axle weight distributions vehicle -- the axle weight related damage should be component should be roughly
(20/5)**4 : (1/2)**4 which equals 4**4 : 1/16 which equals 256 * 16 : 1 i.e., 4096:1
Considering only the 4th power rule component only, avg. damage for truck are roughly 4000 times that of a car. Actual studies show this is more like about 10000:1
it is probably a safe bet that trucks are proportionately undertaxed everywhere in the US.
Even 5 years ago those same SUV's got 15-20. It's a remarkable improvement in a very short timeframe.
Just for reference, my 2006 v8 4-Runner gets 16MPG under mixed driving and the best I can do in all freeway driving if I keep it under 60 is about 20MPG.
My wife's 2010 v6 Rav4 (which is only slightly smaller) gets nearly 24 in mixed city freeway and close to 28 on pure freeway miles.
In 4 years they added nearly 25% more fuel efficiency (accounting for the weight and power differences).
And yes I support higher gas taxes, Much higher. Federal gas taxes haven't been raised since 1992 and before that is was 1980. The taxes should be indexed against inflation AND average fleet efficiency. After all its the miles driven that damage the road. Personally I'd like to see the gas tax indexed to inflation and fuel efficiency is 2015 with a 1.25 cent increase in the tax (per gallon) per month till then. That would roughly double the federal gas tax, then index it so it never needs legislation to raise it again.
Sounds great!! Do you still have it today?
I'm still saving and planning to buy a '73 - '76 Pontiac Trans Am, 455 4-speed soon. I'll likely do some mods since those late years the insurance and govt were killing muscle cars.
I plan to put an agressive cam in it, maybe bore the engine out, make it less air restricted, and see if I can squeeze out about 400-450 HP at the rear wheels.
Sure, it will likely get maybe 10mpg, but that's a lot of fun per gallon. And it can be my daily driver as that I only live about 7-10 minutes from work.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Maybe it's time? Or simply raise property tax since the majority of the roads will be used by the residents.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
It's not unfair to gas guzzlers, it's unfair to people with long commutes regardless of what they drive.
It would be better to just jack up the gas tax. It punishes the wasteful more than the thrifty and is still has some relationship to distance driven. Plus it doesn't punish EV drivers at all, for now I'd think they're worth giving a break.
Or even better yet, start charging big rig operators the lion's share of the road maintenance costs for causing the lion's share of the damage.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Sorry, but you couldn't be more wrong.
In fact I am a rocket scientist - my graduate engineering work involved simulations of chemical reactions on space shuttle heat shield tiles under re-entry conditions to evaluate catalysts to try to prevent exothermic recombination of atomic radicals on the surface.
So shut the hell up. You have no idea who you are talking to or what their knowledge and experience base is. And you got caught blowing out a stereotype straight out of a conservative radio talk show which was utterly and completely wrong in every possible way.
Bullshit, what poor person drives a car with poor MPG? They dump them fast and hard and fawn over the hypermiler's favorites like the CRX HF, AE9x-AE1x series Corolla, and Swift. When your car costs less than a high-end laptop, fuel costs are a big deal.
The SUVs that rich idiots drive suck fuel like a black hole, like the Range Rover...anything, BMW X5 and Cadillac Escalade.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Miles driven does nothing to the road compared to pounds per square inch. My cars do almost nothing, both are around 2klbs, one is on 195/50/15 tires and one is on 30x9.5"s. Very low psi on the road. Compare to a big rig...every single time one comes into my neighborhood I find new potholes.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
If so then the tax would have to be linked to the fourth power of the weight per load bearing wheel of the vehicle as well. Otherwise you would have to pay taxes on your bike too.
The heavier vehicles damage the road more (yes it's more complicated than that but... ).
I should add, this measure, like most taxes, has little to do with fairness. Indeed, the art of taxation, as seventeenth-century French administrator Jean-Baptiste Colbert reportedly said, "consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing." -- The measure is about collecting more taxes. Period.
Someone needs to be arrested for taking bribes from the petrol industry!
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
Fuel efficient vehicles are also lighter and therefore do less damage. Unless they want to create a perverse incentive for 55 mpg cars, and thus environmental damage they'll have to pay for in other ways, they'd better think this over.
I'm always puzzled why people demonise old cars and their drivers (unless you sell new cars, of course).
If you can keep an older car on the road, it's probably because you (1) travel relatively low mileage and/or (2) you keep the car in good condition.
Failing the above, you are driving an old wreck into the ground, so it won't be around for very long anyway.
Whatever, there's little point in penalising someone who drives an older car.
"Why is it backwards for the state to expect that those that use the roads pay 'their fair share' for them like the rest of it's gas using users?"
It's backwards in so many ways it hurts.
1) First and foremost: if you want to be paid for road usage, damn do bill for road usage, not other concerns like your t-shirt color or how much gas your car burns (i.e.: toll roads).
2) Because of failing so bad in point 1 above, they find themselves now in the need for more failing movements.
3) A road doesn't require maintenance by gas expended but because of load. More economic cars weight less so they erode the road less.
4) More hungry cars means more oil consumption this higher gas prices. A road requires its fair share of petrochemicals which means that roads become more expensive to build and maintain while fuel efficient cars make them cheaper.
As the owner of a 70mpg 280lb motorcycle I commute on, my best option would be to take the motor out, sell the rest of the bike, and put the motor in another light bike rated for a mpg bellow the cutoff. Are the cops going to check my R1 to make sure its not missing 3 cylinders? I also don't think its far on usage as motorcycles do very little road damage with their lighter weight. Traditionally they've paid less usage because they use less gas, but unless there is an "Except motorcycles" clause, this would screw them.
Has nothing to do with being PC I own a small bussiness and need my pickup for work so I can employ 3-4 people in the summer and I pay an assload of taxes for the priviledge. So thank me for helping the economy and fuck off.
I'd vote for this, if the direct tax on fuel was abolished and the new per-km tax rate was in direct proportion to the wear the vehicle caused to the road, which is in turn fairly easy to calculate based on the weight of the vehicle. Most hybrids and highly economical cars are lightweight so this would ultimately be a big win for anyone with a small car and you won't get any opposition from owners of hybrids. Big SUV owners will be up in arms though... but there aren't many voters who drive those are there? ;)
The other advantage is that rail freight might become economical again (wear on roads caused by small vehicles is insignificant compared to large trucks, so a "fair" tax would increase haulage rates by road). And it would make the cost of moving stuff around more expensive, encouraging local industry.
OTOH if you simply levy an additional tax on the tiny little hybrid vehicles because "they're using the roads but not paying their fair share of taxes" then you're doing it completely wrong.
"I don't know why you went AC on this, but it is absolutely correct."
No, he isn't and it's easy to make it obvious: imagine a world with only light cars doing 55 mpg. Do you think that now the roads wouldn't need to be built or that that at least they wouldn't need maintenance? really?
So it's a matter of finding a more or less sensible manner to share the load. And that's what isn't obvious (except for lesser minds, of course): even if you don't own a car at all, do you really want to live in a country without roads? really?
Yes that is what us with comercial vehicles have to pay. We use our vehicles for work and have to pay ou the ass. If you are taking your vehicle to work why shouldn't you pay the say rate?
This article disputes your general premise. Government workers make more than private sector for the same education level.
http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/08/29/federal-state-workers-overpaid/
Do you have any references to support your claim?
Thanks
22-30mpg is crap. I've had better mileage than that for over a decade even on US made autos.
In the past decade? I call bullshit. Prove it or shut up.
Many bicyclists bring up the point that they are so light that they shouldn't have to pay a road tax because they're not damaging the road. Of course, for this theory to hold, we should never have to repair bicycle paths. Yet we do.
Like all paving, bicycle paths develop potholes and cracks due to water erosion and thermal expansion / contraction. The damage done to a bike path by the bicycles that travel over it is infinitesimal compared to wear done by the elements. This is also true for passenger cars, for the most part (except those times when idiots drive around with chains on their tires after the snow has melted). As has been mentioned elsewhere in this comment section, most damage to road is done by large trucks and tractor-trailers.
A lot of people think they can make a theory seem invalid by just saying anything, and then concluding with an air of total authority. Yet they can't.
Cutting spending on what? That is entirely the problem, no one wants to cut spending on anything that matters.
Who on earth is going to volunteer to manage the DOT (I sure wouldn't, it sounds miserable), and even if you can find someone to do it competently, do you really think that's going to save more than a few million dollars a year?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I've heard of some retarded laws but taxing consumers for driving hybrid cars is out of control. The entire reason you buy a hybrid is to save money on gas, so why should I have to pay extra tax? To put this into prospective should truck drivers pay less for gas because they have small penis issues? If I want to drive my prius I should be allowed to. Taxing me for driving a car that isn't as hard on the enviroment gives the impression that if you care about fuel consumption you need to pay more.
I think US Office Of Personnel Management has better data than your article: http://www.opm.gov/feddata/historicaltables/totalgovernmentsince1962.asp
So, federal government: 4.4 million employees
Plus, state and local, 16 million: http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/governments/cb12-156.html
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
You don't know any poor people do you? Most of the poor drive the old cheap cast offs and the big old luxury cars driven by old people survive well. The big land yachts that never tear up or die. 5000 pounds of steel and chrome with a front seat bigger than most peoples couches. 40 year old caddies and lincolns that get 10 to 15 mpg if they are properly tuned which they seldom are. You can pick them up all the time for 5 or 6 hundred dollars and drive around with a cloud of smoke following you. If it dies you walk away and get another one. When I got out of the service in 88 I had limited funds and picked up a 74 malibu with a 350 engine and 4 doors for the family for 600 dollars and spent about 400 dollars getting it in good running condition. It got about 14 city and 17 highway and I drove it from 1988 to 2002 and spent money on tires, oil and gas for it. When it dropped a valve I got 300 dollars for scrap and moved on. That's how working poor do it. Yes I could have got a toyota corolla for a couple of grand that I didn't have but it would have got maybe 22 mpg and that's not enough difference to be worth it, especially when it would have cost me tons of money to fix if it did break whereas if I had wanted to I could have dropped an engine in the malibu for 500 bucks if I needed to. Mileage isn't everything.
Its not a penalty, its cutting out a loophole just like letting tax cuts expire is not raising taxes.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
They already do that. It's not always mandatory, but that's what those "Port of Entry" truck stops are on interstates and main highways.
Among other things, they may be checking weight, the driver's logs (legal limits on how many hours they can drive without a break), cargo manifests and permits especially for hazardous cargoes, etc.
-- Alastair
a per-mile tax after 2015 to offset the loss in tax revenue for fuel efficient cars
Right, because the last thing we'd want to incentivize is fuel efficiency. Maybe those selfish economical drivers will see the error of their ways, man up, and start driving Hummers.
1999 Saturn SL, manual transmission, listed as 27MPG city and I think 35 MPG highway. I definitely averaged around 32MPG or so for my normal commute. And this was not the highest mileage commonly available auto out there.
Assuming that the older car is reasonably well maintained, it probably gets comparable or even better mileage than today's heavy, overpowered cars.
for Kinky Friedman's next campaign for Texas Governor. Or go to any Willie Nelson concert. You'll see crap that will make your head spin.
How about whoever damages the roads more pays more for the road usage.
Do you know where to send Jack Frost's tax bill? I understand that for any state at a latitude north of Oklahoma he does more damage than all other driver's combined ...
"Flame away, I wear asbestos underwear"
So the federal government is spending tax money (that it doesn't really have, and so must borrow) to subsidize the purchase of electric cars, and now that there are more of them, this cuts gas tax revenue to the states. That old saying about good intentions and roads comes to mind....
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
1999 Saturn SL, manual transmission, listed as 27MPG city and I think 35 MPG highway. I definitely averaged around 32MPG or so for my normal commute. And this was not the highest mileage commonly available auto out there.
You're comparing the mpg of a car to that of an SUV, of course you're going to get higher...
And then it will be able to rebuild railroads, so it will stop using a luxury form of travel as the primary form of transportation.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
They already do, they are called weigh stations.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
It already is. If you listen to all the hype, you save money by buying electricity rather than gasoline already. If thats not true than we shouldn't by all uppity about EV anyway.
What should happen is all vehicles should be taxed based on milage * average weight per contact surface (may classify different types such as wheel/tire versus track), regardless of type pf powerplant used.
Sure, if you drive out of state a lot, the wrong state will be getting the tax money, however when done on a nationwide scale, this balances itself out and really isn't an issue except for those uppity people who want to claim they shouldn't be taxed for driving in another state and neither should Amazon.
Problem solved. You should still save money (at least until you take battery replacement costs into account) driving EV over combustion engine powered, hence there is an obvious incentive do drive an EV.
Of course the reality of it is, if you actually look at the total cost per mile traveled with an EV, its worse, not better than a good old gas guzzler.
In a few years when the next next next awesome battery tech comes along, that will probably change.
Until then I don't want to hear any bullshit about incentizing EVs just like I don't want to hear any Ethanol subsidy bullshit.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
I'm not quite sure where the voices in your head are trying to go with this, but concrete roads will last some decades instead of a few years like asphalt, which might possibly explain why most highways in America are concrete.
My rig is already self-driving. At least while I'm snoozing.
After reading a number of the comments, a couple points seem to be missed:
- There are large hybrid cars like the full size SUVs from Lexus, large sedans like Accords and Camrys, and CUVs like Ford Escape. If weight is the enemy, these "efficient" vehicles are doing more road damage than the Fiat 500, Subarau BRZ, or even a non-hybrid Accord or Camry.
- While big rigs do a majority of the damage on major roads, road repairs also need to be done on the multitudes of residential and side streets that big rigs don't drive upon. That damage is almost exclusively environment and personal vehicles.
Speaking as an Oregonian, I think this is a decent stop gap. Not a final answer, but an interim solution to deal with the continuing evolution of the personal auto. It doesn't penalize hybrid owners, it decreases the discount that the state is already giving hybrid buyers for purchasing the car. It also goes after cars, like hybrids and EVs, that are paying less in road repairs but are creating more damage compared to like cars due to their increased weight (e.g. Volt vs. Cruze, Accord/Civic/Camry hybrids vs. non-hybrids of the same cars).
It's a shame that fuel costs are making it expensive for big trucks. Fortunately the free market can sort that out - trucking heavy things long distances will become more expensive, and maybe more efficient transport will become more competitive.
The amount of damage caused to the road by a vehicle goes up as the FOURTH power of the vehicle's weight. http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policy/091116/03.htm
So I have no issue with the cost of trucking going up - right now, it's the big rigs that don't pay their share of the road costs, not the drivers of light, efficient cars.
sustainable living
People who choose an SUV because they actually need an SUV will not be very surprised at the expenses of one. Only hypocrites out of that camp will lobby government to demand people making a different choice to make up the difference, which is what this is about.
getting too many campaign contributions and "consulting" from oil cartels and other conglomerates.
Socially and Environmentally Responsible Citizen: "I can do my part to reduce my carbon footprint by driving this alternative energy powered vehicle"
Enter Sociopathic Lawmaker
Lawmaker: "It puts the gas in its tank or it gets the tax again"
This crap isn't new. Hobbyists and inventors have already been threatened with jail time for tax evasion by using home brewed biodiesel because they didn't understand the regulations regarding fuel tax.
And if we are so concerned about people using roads without paying for the infrastructure, what about all those tax-evading pedestrians, cyclists, and wheelchair operators that using public sidewalks everyday. They should all be required to strap on GPS mileage loggers and pay their tax share as well. Same goes for all those brats getting a free education. They should all get a bill upon graduation for the cost of their schooling unless they pay for their own private education or get homeschooled by their mommy. Why force childless property owners to pay for others self-indulging personal development when nowadays a high school grad with a year and a half of college ends up in a career waiting tables when the previous generation could wait tables just fine without a high school diploma or a college degree?
OK - I'll stop before I go to far - I think the tea baggers will try to grab onto my cynical satire and use my bogus arguments as talking points at their next book burning ceremony.
An not-really-that-efficient sedan certainly will not do better with a bigger box on top...
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
My 1983 mercedes S-class, when I drove it in 2003 got 9L/100km (that's 26MPG US) so that was a 20 year old car at the time, and that was 10 years ago, and that was a boat of a car.
Of course the other thing the environmental nazis always glaze over is the environmental cost of destroying one perfectly good car and making a new one. That isn't a net zero process either!
I always figured that keeping that car on the road was probably way better for the environment than upgrading every 5 years like the auto-dealers want you to.
In a world with only light cars you use a tax system that makes sense in a world with only light cars. In a world with cars that do significantly more damage, you should not as it is NOT THE SAME WORLD.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
If the vehicle weighs significantly less, why should they pay the same as one that weighs more when it's proven that heavier vehicles damage roads a lot more than light ones?
The only way for people to "pay their own way" for road repairs would be for a scheme that charges some formula of weight and distance (and as such a bike or small car would pay very little compared to big truck)
Of course we could also stop and think about what the fuel taxes are actually for. Are they to: a) discourage use of lots of a non-renewable and polluting resource b) fund road maintenance c) increase overall government revenue?
If primarily a) then we should raise the fuel tax to encourage cleaner alternatives (while maintaining a neutral revenue) if primarily b) we should eliminate them and come up with a different method, perhaps a fee at registration renewal that calculates based on weight and mileage? if primarily c) than we should eliminate them and raise funds in a more equitable way such as a general income tax increase.
Of course the truth is that it isn't any one of those, it's a combination of all three, and probably needs a combination of approaches to get to the ideal goal. Unfortunately the route they're taking is likely to hinder the adoption of fuel efficient vehicles, as many of them are only marginally affordable as it is (when compared to cheaper traditional vehicles), increasing their cost/km may put them back to a point where it's cheaper to just buy the gas-guzzler with the lower up-front costs, more expensive fuel, but no other sur-tax.
How about we make higher quality roads instead of paying unions to do a shit job and then tear the roads up again every few years?
Seriously, Chicago just had a few major highways repaved a few years ago. Already falling apart...
I don't understand why this doesn't come up more often when we talk about transportation taxes. Build ROADS that withstand stresses better. Sure, it puts a few guys with shovels out of work, but that's progress... let's get out of the stone age with roads.
-
You may not be allowed to pump it yourself... but I bet you're allowed to look to see which nozzle they grabbed...
But how do you capture the actual impact to road costs of a heavy vehicle driven very little vs a light vehicle driven a lot more? Taxing mileage would work, but the proposed technologies (GPS plus logging and reporting to a government agency) raise too many privacy concerns.
Fuel consumption is the best proxy for vehicle weight plus usage that anyone has come up with to date*. What's wrong with that? Need more revenue? Increase the fuel tax.
*I do like the idea of a studded tire tax.
Have gnu, will travel.
How regressive. Punish the people who are least able to afford a newer car.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
The average driver (20-55) drives 15,000 miles per year. At 30 mpg, that's 500 gallons *.30/gallon tax = $150/year. Tires get 50-60,000 miles, so they really only need to be replaced every 3-4 years. Adding $600 of taxes to $300 of tires isn't going to go over well.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
EV drivers still cause wear and tear on the roadways. They should pay their fair share of maintenance costs.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
The people you want to tax, who drive $60k suvs could give a shit less what gas costs.
Well then, if they could give a shit less, then it is not being taxed enough.
Citation
Da Blog
To legislators and authorities east, west north and south - we don't want to be squeezed anymore. There will never be "enough" money, ever. It's a property of our system - to fill all gaps like an ideal gas. Some genius, for instance, suggested recently to tax the bicycles in Amsterdam because the city hall needs more money. I'll not try to explain why this is the stupidest idea of the century, so here comes my greeting:
Let me tell you how it will be
There's one for you, nineteen for me
'Cause I'm the taxman, yeah, I'm the taxman
Should five per cent appear too small
Be thankful I don't take it all
'Cause I'm the taxman, yeah I'm the taxman
If you drive a car, I'll tax the street,
If you try to sit, I'll tax your seat.
If you get too cold I'll tax the heat,
If you take a walk, I'll tax your feet.
Don't ask me what I want it for
If you don't want to pay some more
'Cause I'm the taxman, yeah, I'm the taxman
Now my advice for those who die
Declare the pennies on your eyes
'Cause I'm the taxman, yeah, I'm the taxman
And you're working for no one but me.
The Beatles
Uh, reducing mass DOES reduce the wear on the road.
That's right, hippies. Your ego-friendly smart cart which sips fuel (if it uses petroleum fuel directly at all) is depriving the hard working government of your state of much needed revenue. Get with the program!
(Wanna bet you'll have people falsely reporting/failing to report this information?)
The point of fuel taxes is that it's supposed to roughly translate to road use and wear, so as to (hopefully) reflect the costs of necessary road repair and upkeep work done. If there's no revenue, no work can be done. This is an interesting stop-gap but I have to wonder how long it will last. There's no realistic way to track it. They're going to have to put it on something like vehicle registration: register a gas sipping vehicle, you get a bill in the month for a "minimum" number of miles driven each month above and beyond.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
maybe provide a salary that pays no more than the average worker who mans a shovel?
Where have i heard that phrase before? Hint, his mausoleum was adorned with a sickle and hammer. This is not implying you are incorrect, just that you aren't saying something new.
If I drive outside of Washington state and fill up in Washington state, they've effectively taxed my driving out of state.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
No, it's not. The purposes of fuel taxes is for road repair. People who drive more on roads are, well, using roads more. With use comes wear. This is why diesel is so heavily taxed at the pump now (in part) - trucks do more wear/tear on roadways.
I fail to see how a mileage based tax - ie a use tax - would not be superior to a commodities tax (fuel), as it would more closely couple the tax and where it's going.
The alternative is to needlessly penalize people who drive lower MPG vehicles. You know, the people who can't afford or do not wish to afford a newer vehicle, because there's no point in getting rid of something that works, and their actual use of the vehicle is minimal enough to not justify buying a new one. Taxing the shit out of fuel will, basically, just push people to consume more cars when the old ones are still quite serviceable. (I say this as someone who only drives a diesel '86 Blazer on occasion - less than 5k a year.)
I might note that 'road tax' on gasoline isn't structured like diesel is, in case you didn't know. Vehicles used off-road are not taxed (due to the availability of 'farm diesel') road tax, which is a significant percentage of the cost of fuel. (This allows farmers and ranchers to not have to pay road taxes to fuel their tractors and farm trucks.) I see no reason why this structure should not also be used for gasoline (especially since I and people like me, as well as all the people with spiffy new TDI cars, still have to pay the added tax on diesel that heavy trucks do).
Of course, needlessly penalizing people who disagree with you is pretty much what progressive government does on an exclusive basis, so, rock on and tax 'consumption' through the roof so that you and your fellow upper middle class friends can keep doing your weekend trips to Tahoe or Aspen without the added costs of paying proportionate road tax.
(I'm going to guess you're also in favor of progressive taxation schemes - just a wiiiild guess.)
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
see i just had this argument with someone a few weeks back i said it does not matter if cars got awesome gas mileage they will just raise gas prices and there it is. why you think they jacked disle prices so high because bmw made a clean burning disle a few years back that got 50 mpg. before that it was cheaper then unleaded. it keep buyer and maker away from it despite it getting better mpg and with modern tec burn cleean. because the epa hates it.
In Oregon trucks with a gross weight over 26,000 lbs. already pay a weight mileage tax ranging from about 5 cents/mile up to over 16 cents/mile at 80,000 lbs.
I think it should be closer to mileage * number of axles * (weight/number of axles)^4 if it is to reflect road wear. Which means that cars should pay a negligible amount, and trucks should pay nearly all of the road tax. The wear put on the road by a truck is hundreds to thousands times higher than that of a car.
,where X/Y=(money spent on new roads)/(money spent on replacing old roads)
Of course, we might want to discern between money for making new roads, and money for replacing old roads. So I suppose is should be
X*mileage + Y*mileage*number of axles * (weight/number of axles)^4
UPS, FedEx, etc. all use diesel vehicles. Diesel, which is primarily used by OTR truckers, already pay a markedly higher amount of road tax due to the lower MPG of their trucks as well as the significantly higher number of miles run.
Any 'use' tax on roadways should, naturally, be based on something like the median MPG of vehicles on the road, which is sort of a different way of getting to the same place the "cents per gallon" tax approach: end goal is to tax vehicles based on how much they use roadways. So if this went national, they'd just eliminate the tax from a gallon of fuel and base it off median mileage - let's say it's about 20mpg, for the sake of argument (newer 40+mpg contrasting against heavy work trucks, OTR, and older vehicles). So everyone would get taxed (more or less) $0.43 per mile (at $3.60/gal), assuming a 20mpg fuel consumption - or about $0.022 per mile, with current fuel tax rates. You drive 10,000 miles a year, you pay $220 in taxes; 20,000, you pay $440, and so on.
It saves the state a lot of money having to try to basically guess how much they need to tax the fuel based on the fuel economy of vehicles and can instead base it on closer figures, like actual mileage put onto the roadways.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
You must live in California. I'm sorry.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Why not simply increase the cost of car registrations and decrease the tax on fuel? If everyone pays for car registration (I'm assuming it's illegal to drive an unregistered car), the tax is evenly applied and by decreasing the tax on fuel it doesn't penalise less fuel efficient car owners in the process.
Better yet, to create an incentive for people to switch to more economical options, why not stagger the tax reduction on fuel so it returns to present day level over a period of time, therefore making a less fuel effiicient car slightly less economical to run or own over a gradual period.
If that doesn't sound workable, why not simply hike the registration cost for fuel efficient cars, so the owner pays a bit more up front?
If they would just ban the use of studded tires they wouldn't have to replace the roads every fucking year.
Yes, it pisses me of, in case you were wondering.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
Stereotyping is too easy. I drive a new light duty pickup that gets better mileage than my previous vehicle - a full size sedan. I live in Texas where driving your own vehicle is virtually, for better or for worse, the only way to get around. There is bus service in my area, but according to the DART transit calculator I would have to leave home at 6am to get to work by noon.
But I do live within just a few miles of where I work. I'd commute on my bike, but I don't have enough heavy clothes to be outdoors more than 15 minutes during the coldest weeks of winter and there are no clothes that will keep me from showing up to work smelling like a sweaty dog during several months of 110 degrees heat during the summer.
Given that they want to charge a flat tax to anyone that doesn't let a GPS or similar type mileage logger track their every move, I see this more as a threat to privacy than a tax generating scheme. The IRS already has procedures in place to report mileage, but they are voluntary and rely on the honesty of taxpayers to report the truth. Blatant falsifications can but spotting during an audit. So why not just allow voluntary mileage reporting? Why an electronic tracking system to monitor our roadway usage? Not to mention that this tax system punishes state residents while out-of-state drivers can "consume" road usage without paying any such tax, which will especially be the case in border towns.
What happened to the common-sense approach of taxing citizens across the board at a flat or progressive rate and efficiently providing government services to the general public as demand required? Are people from poor districts still allowed to take their children to the nice parks in the rich districts, or is there now a gate keeper to view proof of residence and to collect fees from the riftraft deadweight freeloaders taking advantage of the poor rich people's public spaces?
The 2012 Suburban can do 21mpg on the highway, but that's optimal and only in situations where it's going to kick down to half as many cylinders; at all 8 cylinders firing, it doesn't really do much better than about 13-15mpg.
Believe it or not, all your space age crumple zones and other design decisions which increase surviveability of the passengers (but markedly decrease the vehicle's survival in a minor fender bender) markedly increase vehicle weight. Those big, heavy Suburbans from the 1980s? They're not only larger by quite a bit (overall dimensions as well as weight - 500-800lb larger, IIRC) but have similar ~13-15mpg highway mileage - and can still tow at 70mpg.
Gas taxes, which are quickly turning into the modern vice tax, do just what other vice taxes do: Tax the poor.
Hey, when you're taxing cigarettes until the cost of production of each pack doubles (due to decreased consumption - all while cancer rates fail to drop, interestingly) and taxing liquor is already as high as the common man will bear, you've got to find something else to tax that everyone uses (for the time being). A more appropriate miles-driven-per-year-based-on-median-vehicle-mpg tax would be much more favorable, in my mind.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
The feds rated it at 25/31, average 28 mpg. No way you were averaging 10 mpg over...
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/noframes/11683.shtml
As I said elsewhere, base the gas tax on current fuel costs (or the last time gas tax was changed, if you wish, on an index), based on median fuel efficiency of all road vehicles (let's say it's about 20mpg once you factor in OTR trucks, older vehicles, etc.)
Of course, what do you want to bet this results in the EPA further inflating actual fuel efficiency of newer vehicles, or 'readjusting' their formulas, to increase tax revenue?
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
A manual economy sedan, at that.
Sorry, modern SUVs (you know, Suburbans or Expeditions - basically all that's left in that category) don't really get that much better economy - still around 18mpg in best case scenarios. That's what my full size '86 diesel Blazer gets on the highway.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
I'm sure there is a lot of wasted money in administrative overhead.
"I'm sure", in this case, translates to "I don't know and I can't be bothered to find out, but that won't stop me from making an unfounded assertion".
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
A better example would be like the low flow toilets required in all publicly accessible buildings in San Francisco (including rentals).
Net result: water costs are up, and any savings in water are spent on bleach and sanitation for the now-clogged public sewers. Meanwhile, they're dumping huge amounts of bleach into the bay, and the city smells more like shit and piss than ever.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Calling an expiring 'tax cut' not raising taxes is like calling sleeping with your ex when your girlfriend is out of town not infidelity.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Tax cars at a rate of $10,000 per vehicle, but allow owners to pay off the tax slowly. How slow? $100 is due at each 10,000 increment until the tax is paid off (i.e. 1 million miles), with taxes deferred for any mileage driven when the car is not registered in the state or when it is registered with a salvage or other "non-driving" title. "Taxes deferred" just means you will have to keep paying taxes after the millionth mile until the full $10,000 is paid off. If the car is permanently junked or permanently moved out of state, then the taxes are "deferred forever."
Convoluted? You betcha. But it's just like gas taxes in that it's effectively taxing miles driven in and out of the state even if on paper, and in legal terms taxing something else entirely.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
And there's no way you could drive a more efficient pickup?
No sig today...
I pay 61.129c NZD per litre petrol tax. That's $1.90USD/gallon.
That's on top of 15% sales tax.
I'd live in a country without roads if there was nothing to drive on them.
If I don't own a car, part of the cost of anything physical I buy would be transportation. hence I pay road tax by proxy.
Unbelievably stupid idea. I'm sorry to the citizens of the USA, but is it any wonder that most of the rest of the world thinks that your country is populated, at least 50%, by morons? Global warming? Peak oil? Pollution? Oh wait: Intelligent Design. God will no doubt save you.
Professional Idiot
Hybrid cars weigh more. There's that big old battery and those electric motors, as well as a petrol engine and gas tank.
A Prius weighs 500lbs more than a Corolla. It uses less petrol.
22 US gallons is 18 Imperial gallons. I get 42 MPG in my 11 year old, not particularly fuel efficient family-sized hatchback.
So yeah, 22 is pretty poor.
Like China? A large nation who's rapidly expanding domestic flights and automobile usage at exponential rates???
No. Like the OTHER China that just a few days ago opened the worlds longest highspeed railroad line:
http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/01/04/3164610/china-worlds-longest-high-speed.html
So what exactly was your point again?
Now you see the flaw in railroads being a primary solution to public transportation. Next, you'll be in favor of horse back riding where all we have to do is shovel shit off the dirt roads.
No, I don't see the flaw yet. Please explain.
bickerdyke
It's a shame that fuel costs are making it expensive for big trucks. Fortunately the free market can sort that out - trucking heavy things long distances will become more expensive, and maybe more efficient transport will become more competitive.
Hopefully local (heck, "domestic" would already be a good start!) production of everyday stuff will be competetive again.
bickerdyke
Which means per-mile tax on all autos in order to be fair...
Also by weight - the reason given is that they're wearing out the roads. Heavy cars wear them out even more...and we're right back to SUVs again.
No sig today...
Miles driven does nothing to the road compared to pounds per square inch.
Damn it! I knew all those lycra-clad cyclists with their 120psi racing tyres were wrecking the road!
Yeah, they do that in CA, too. :P
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Yep. This should be applied to *all* drivers, not just the fuel-efficient ones.
No sig today...
SUVs are not the gas guzzlers many make them out to be. Newer ones are getting 22 to 30mpg.
On paper, sure ... but we all know what they get in real life.
PS: Cars got better, too.
No sig today...
Theoretically, yes... but if the state where the vehicle is registered is collecting the tax (rather than the state where the fuel is sold), there will be games played. Some state is going to have a ridiculously low mileage tax, allow mail-in self reporting when accompanied by a photo, and lax enough standards to allow everyone to have a license plate, even if the vehicle has never been within the state's borders.
There's probably some loophole that will allow me to register my car in Guam, and end up paying $27/year* for mileage tax, while driving around the CONUS without paying that $0.45+/gal tax when I fill up.
* this is a fabricated number.
This will probably bring the effective US vehicle and fuel taxes in line with, say, Europe's.
Cyclists pay for the bike paths through municipal taxes.
Cities can't tax gas and bicycles aren't allowed on non-municipal roads (at least where I live)
Bicycles reduce pollution, traffic congestion and parking issues. Cities are wise to encourage them.
Note that cyclists also contribute to gas taxes because it's hidden in the price of all food and services.
Because driving a high efficiency or electric vehicle should be encouraged, not penalized.
Yes, obviously the correct move is to increase tax on fuel until the net revenue is the same. This will recover losses and give an even bigger incentive to be fuel efficient.
Do you know where to send Jack Frost's tax bill?
Canada.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
The Citroen AX 1.4 diesel could get 100mpg, a car that is now over 1/4 a century old. One was driven from Dover to Barcelona on 10 gallons of Diesel.
The main reason why mileage is going up is NOT due to having radically different engine designs with high MPG, but mostly due to lightening the loads in the vehicles. Unibodys are much lighter than the old truck chassis. Likewise, using aluminum and plastic instead of steal lowers the weight. Finally, moving from large 6 passenger cars to small 4 and even now 3 or 2 passenger vehicles means small LIGHT cars.
A light car does not use up the roads the ways that a massive truck or suburban does. Those will put a large load on each tire, which digs deeper into the roads. Take a turn and it removes both tire AND road surface.
Now, if you wish to point to electric and NG vehicles as not paying, well, you would be right. However, these are such a small number and will remain such, that it is foolish to change the system for these. However, even these can be taxed at the right time. Electric cars are efficient when charged at night. If somebody is charging in the daytime, it actually costs ALL OF US money to charge that. The reason is that it will put a larger demand on the electric system. So by putting a tax on auto electricity from commercial systems during the daytime, we can encourage electric cars to charge at night as well as match the vehicles to the demand.
If these lawmakers really want to tax the users that cause the most damage, than they should simply increase taxes on fuel. In addition, to keep the states from battling it out with neighboring states, the tax on diesel should be increased and handled by the feds for the highways and infrastructures. The fact is, that semi trucks do the vast majority of damage to roads, not lightweight cars.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Vehicles do NOT use the roads equally. Far from it. Light-weight cars do not make anywhere near the damage that a semi-truck does. The reason is that it is not just miles on the vehicle but weight. And the MPG is a pretty good indicator of car weight. The fact is, that 2 vehicles from the same time, will have roughly the same efficiency in the engine. As such, what changes the mpg is the weight (which also correlates with power).
Most fair share is the fuel tax since it does all this without convoluted calculations.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
It currently does just that. MPG is largely a factor of larger vehicle size (aerodynamic drag is larger) which is a larger vehicle weight. As such, MPG will decrease for the larger vehicles and they will pay more in increased fuel. As such, they should stay with this.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
wrong. The loads will simply switch to trains which is where they actually belong. I do not want to subsidize an inefficient trucking system.
And if you really want to escape the fuel tax, simply switch to Natural Gas. At this time, there is no tax on it. It will be taxed in the future, BUT that is down the road.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
In fact, it should be the feds that have enough balls to do what is right and increase fuel rates on diesel across ALL states. Then the increase should go ONLY to the federal interstate AND state intrastate HIGHWAY system, including bridges. The fact is, that staring with reagan, we have not invested into our road infrastructure. As such, it makes sense to increase diesel tax.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
and not Natural gas.
But for those that use the argument of electric vehicles, there is an easy solution to this. Skip worrying about those that charge at home. The reason is that if they charge at night, they actually LOWER ALL OF OUR ELECTRICITY COSTS. Yes, by charging in the middle of the night, power companies are able to run their base load systems at a higher rate, and more importantly, when they do build new plants, it will be base load systems, as opposed to more expensive day-time on-demand systems.
So, where and when should you tax electric cars to pay their way? When they charge in high demand times. Basically, the more cars that charge in daytime, and the more that it will cost ALL electric users. Charging in the daytime at a home is expensive. The reason is that most home owners of electric cars get price breaks during the night time. During the daytime, they pay full price. BUT, the commercial stations, such as at walgreens, should be charged a tax for day-time usage. Interestingly, all of the systems, have the ability to do just that. IOW, taxes can be added to those commercial systems, and can be time based.
Natural gas, can also be charged at the stations.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
blame the congress/DOT, not the unions. It comes down to what DOT will pay. However, as one that grew up in Ill back in the 60s and 70's, Ill has ALWAYS had shit roads. ALWAYS. The reason is that they always did the minimum amount to get by.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Actually, it IS difficult. The reason is that it is the truckers that really need the increased taxes. Yet, if oregan raises their taxes above neighboring states, it will cause the truckers to fill up outside of the state and then drive across without paying any taxes what so ever.
What is really needed is for FEDERAL CONgress to pass a bill that will slowly increase diesel tax yearly, and put 100% of the new increase into the highway system. By that, I mean, inter AND INTRA highway system. Basically, the money needs to go to state highways as well as federal highways.
BTW, states should also raise gasoline taxes slowly at the same time, but it is not a big disaster. Few of the heavy vehicles use gasoline. So raising gas taxes above the neighbors is not a killer. It will impact taxes around a 20 mile range from the borders, but that would be the worst of it. OTOH, if the majority of drivers are within that 20 mile range, then they might have issues. But, I do not think that is the case.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
That depends on your definition of "old car". There aren't a lot of genuinely old cars (say anything pre-90s) driving around anymore, which means that the vast majority of cars driving around these days have catalytic convertors and various other anti-pollution devices.
I drive a 12 year-old car that gets around 25mpg. I keep it well-maintained, it's almost completely rust-free and in mechanically great condition. I figure that the environmental impact of producing a new car is much larger than the impact of me driving a car with less-than-modern gas mileage.
Eat the rich.
Milage tax isn't fair to the people with long commutes. I don't expect people who live in the big cities and walk/take a bus to work to care about how a milage tax hurts the commuters who generally live in the suburbs, but thanks for suggesting it. How about we do something crazy... Instead of using gas tax and tolls for subsidizing various social programs, we actually use it to maintain the f-ing roads and have _all_ of it go to DOT where there should be more than enough to go around. Since this will hurt Joe Politician's "revenue stream" for his pet projects he was lobbied for, I'm sure that will never happen. Nope, lets increase the taxes because we need more revenue to pay for the shit that we say you want!
There is a lot of waste in road repair/build spending. Here is an idea: Instead of paying five guys to stand around and watch one guy work, how about if they only pay two or three guys to stand around and watch one guy work? That way, they would build and repair more roads with the money they already have.
Your "fair share" is NOT in my wallet.
And let the working poor that can barely afford an older, low MPG car BE DAMNED.
Some virtuous folks can't see past their six-figure salaries, I see.
You're right, but I propose that it would be worthwhile to effectively subsidize them temporarily through this tax break to spur adoption, for the environmental and national security benefits. Do you disagree?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
[...]
Funding the S-CHIP program through tobacco taxes sounds good... until you reach the tipping point when there aren't enough smokers paying the tax.
[...]
Yes, sure, and while the eggheads are at it, why not as well enforce a "non-smoker" tax, i.e., everyone who smokes less than a pack of cigarettes or equivalent (zero is less) has to pay a tax for not smoking ....
Reading this headline as a European makes me think that some politicians in the states have lost their marbles ....
Umm...who's talking about subsidies? I was talking about saving money because of the lesser fuel consumed. Have road tax as a separate charge and don't link it to fuel consumed. That's just stupid.
Except that a Ford Aspire is basically a Kia. Not really an american car, certainly not to my european eyes (can anyone name me a truly american car with a 91 ci engine?).
Did you know Chevrolet now makes 3-cylinder engined cars? That's just plain wrong.
No, it's not. The purposes of fuel taxes is for road repair. People who drive more on roads are, well, using roads more. With use comes wear. This is why diesel is so heavily taxed at the pump now (in part) - trucks do more wear/tear on roadways.
I fail to see how a mileage based tax - ie a use tax - would not be superior to a commodities tax (fuel), as it would more closely couple the tax and where it's going.
Wear has far more to do with vehicle weight (more specifically PSI road pressure) than distance driven, see this post:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3356485&cid=42472203
Therefore taxing a big rig and a Miata at the same rate per mile driven is extremely unfair.
The alternative is to needlessly penalize people who drive lower MPG vehicles. You know, the people who can't afford or do not wish to afford a newer vehicle, because there's no point in getting rid of something that works, and their actual use of the vehicle is minimal enough to not justify buying a new one. Taxing the shit out of fuel will, basically, just push people to consume more cars when the old ones are still quite serviceable. (I say this as someone who only drives a diesel '86 Blazer on occasion - less than 5k a year.)
Most older cars that are on the road right now aren't generally bad on gas. Most mid '80s-late '90s compact cars - the kind people who don't have a lot of money to spend on cars drive - get MPG that would still be considered decent today. Anything newer than that should do decently as well.
I might note that 'road tax' on gasoline isn't structured like diesel is, in case you didn't know. Vehicles used off-road are not taxed (due to the availability of 'farm diesel') road tax, which is a significant percentage of the cost of fuel. (This allows farmers and ranchers to not have to pay road taxes to fuel their tractors and farm trucks.) I see no reason why this structure should not also be used for gasoline (especially since I and people like me, as well as all the people with spiffy new TDI cars, still have to pay the added tax on diesel that heavy trucks do).
I agree that's a problem, there's no reason to discourage the use of diesel through taxation these days, taxes should be the same on both.
Of course, needlessly penalizing people who disagree with you is pretty much what progressive government does on an exclusive basis, so, rock on and tax 'consumption' through the roof so that you and your fellow upper middle class friends can keep doing your weekend trips to Tahoe or Aspen without the added costs of paying proportionate road tax.
(I'm going to guess you're also in favor of progressive taxation schemes - just a wiiiild guess.)
I take it you discount the concept of environmentalism and any kind of forward-thinking energy policy in it's entirety? I'm not discouraging the use of fuel-inefficient vehicles because I think it's uncool.
And upper middle class? Weekend trips? Hahahaha! I'm a Gen. Y'er and on top of that, I live in the 3rd world.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
They should also tack on an insurance surcharge surcharge surcharge and double or triple the cost of inspection. Upper middle class white faux hippie NPR listening wannabes should be thrilled to pay more for the common good. They're already paying 2 or 3x more for the same car as everyone else.
my old 20yo knackered Mk1 Golf GTi after eating a ring and thus having no compression on one of the cylinders got better mileage than that. I get 60mpg out of its replacement.
sag
Farmers don't have lobbyists, unless you're counting Willie and the FarmAid crew. Only Persons like the world's most admired food production company use lobbyists.
Make your luck, spend a buck.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
higher prices for everything on the shelves at the grocery store, at the mall, or pretty much anywhere else.
God forbid that the tax burden should fall exclusively on the beneficiaries.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
I like the fact that saying that some pay and some don't is unfair. How about the almost 50% of people that do not pay income tax, leaving the rest of us to pay for everything.
So let me get this straight. People that drive a hybrid are not paying enough to maintain the roads, therefore it is necessary to come up with this elaborate and costly to enforce tax. Which will also reduce the incentive to get a hybrid.
At the same time, Oregon provides a tax credit for everyone buying a Hybrid, because the government decided that people should have hybrids.
Maybe it is just me, but would it not just be simpler to eliminate the tax credit, tax everyone the same, and let people decide which is the best car for them based on whatever is most important to them, rather than more government distortions?
What you fail to see is that all the costs are passed to the people eventually anyway. It's your food and merchandise being put on those trucks - why shouldn't you pay for it?
Government decided long ago to build a huge revenue stream based on gasoline usage, because it is defensible to the ignorant masses and high rates can be blamed on others (OPEC, etc.). Now the revenue stream is threatened and they are faced with having to create ridiculous rules to bolster it. The problem is, basing a broad tax on gallons of gas used as opposed to basing it more closely to what the revenue is actually used for. or something like that...
What isn't fair? If they're driving farther, they're adding more wear. Thus, they should pay more taxes to maintain the roads. Whether the mileage tax is actually used to maintain the roads in your location is orthogonal to your original complaint.
It was a choice to live out in the suburbs and drive 40+ miles to work, usually based in no small part on cost of living. Increasing taxes on those who do this simply shifts the balance a little. It would also add indirect pressure to spread out business locations a little and/or provide telecommuting options.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
You could drive 50 cars and 10,000 bikes past and do less damage than a single truck.
More like 10,000 cars and an infinite number of bicycles.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
I love this idea. As long as they remove the taxes from the gas I purchase. I drove less than 3000 miles last year in my F150. A lot of travel for work and I live less than 2 miles from work. Although, not sure how easy it is to crack open the odometer and wind it back. Used to be quite common. Also, could disconnect the speedo. I have seen people disable the speedo on rental cars, back when they used to charge per mile. Again all of this was before 1990. Not sure how easy this is to do now.
No, driving farther has nothing to do with the wear on the roads. It's already been said many times here that the weight of the vehicle is the direct cause (and mother nature). Putting all of that aside, are we going to ignore that a mileage tax is a form of DOUBLE TAXATION?! I already pay the tax on the extra gasoline I have to buy for my commute. When do people say enough is enough?! We need taxes, sure, but who is accountable for where the money is going and what constitutes a double tax? I can guarantee you that the money won't go to where you think it should (DOT in this case), and _that_ is the reason they are running a shortfall here, not because people aren't buying enough gasoline.
Except, as many, many people have pointed out already, relative damage is related to the per axle weight to the 4th power. Which means that 80,000lb truck is doing 31,000 times more damage per mile than a 3,000lb Prius. Since they are Oh so concerned that everyone pay their fair share, and since, apparently the fair share for a Prius is 1.5 cents per mile, that truck is getting one heck of a deal (by their own cost estimates, the 80,000lb truck should be paying 470 $ / mile).
If you are worried that the taxes received from gas sales will go down, then just raise the taxes on gas. This will be very unpopular of course, but it does give the benefit of taxing the people who use more fossil fuels more and will push more people to use fuel efficient vehicles not less people like the per mile tax will do.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
as much as not having roads would.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Riding any kind of bike in the usual sort of American urban motor traffic requires a death wish.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Road in Oregon are pretty good, so I don't know what you are talking about.
Of course you don't really know anything about roads, so you will remain a clueless load mouth fuck.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The cost of any activity should be related to that activity.
Externalities should not be obscured. It distorts the market and encourages counter-productive and anti-social (fraking) behavior.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
It sounds like you are driving an Escort.
So the comparison is not terribly impressive.
The problem is fuel efficiency in a vehicle that's not in some way a deathtrap.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
1.6 billion shortfall.
Oregon uses 45,000 MkWh a year.
45,000,000,000 kWh.
3.5 cent a kWh would solve this with the added bonus that it will also take care of electric cars as well.
Oregon, and many other places, have this weird tax the thing used ONLY for its support; which needs to stop. IN the context of services for society, it's really stupid to do that.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
--Yes, this is a really stupid idea. It's like converting your entire home to use CFL bulbs because they're more efficient to lower your electric bill, and then the d--n electric company **raises the rates** because they're not making "enough" profit anymore!!
--So your state needs to collect more $$ to pay for the roads. Fine. Implement TOLL ROADS / highways. Charging a per-mile tax is asinine.
.
== WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??
Inside the U.S., a good number of large vehicles and convoys are moved by train.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
Toyota Corolla, actually. Never broken down yet.
No, the same China that simultaneously builds high speed passenger rail and has multi-day traffic jams of trucks hauling coal.
FYI America has a _better_ freight rail system then Europe.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Wouldn't you want an inhibitor and not a catalyst? :)
-Xoltri
Suppose it's possible to apply and enforce a mileage tax. Then the right way to do it would be to impose it equally on everyone based on vehicle weight, in addition to gas tax.
Now let's get back to the real world. When mileage readings result in significant costs, people will fudge the mileage en masse. The 'net will be full of instructions on how to do that for your particular car model. Many more will be driving around with huge wheels. GPS-based system? People will wrap them in aluminum foil every other day.
Other than raising the fuel tax rates, the only workable thing is to increase the annual registration fee.
That hasn't worked in a long long time.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
"I'd live in a country without roads if there was nothing to drive on them."
The point is that building roads creates places to drive to.
It's backwards to penalize people for conserving oil. This is a very short-sighted strategy.
When people drive more gas-efficient cars, all things being equal they tend to drive more, offsetting the benefit of increased mpg ratio. Furthermore, many electric cars will still be powered by oil or (ack!) coal, although I feel like Portland would have some clean energy sources. So, yes, penalizing them for driving a more 'green' car (thus, in theory, conserving oil) seems silly, but effectively they may not be conserving oil at all.
I will agree with you and say the proposition sounds entirely bone-headed, all that said.
Except a per mile tax isn't a true use tax. Heavier vehicles cause more damage to roads. Until recently, a gas tax generally did a pretty good job of distributing cost by use (miles x weight of vehicle) since heavier vehicles usually require more gas. Quite frankly, I think the vehicles getting better MPGs should be encouraged to do so. Raise the gas taxes if they aren't meeting demand. The only concern I would have is people with things like plug-in hybrids. They are "getting their gas" from home and aren't paying a gas tax on it. That's the only loop hole I see from a true use perspective though.
Didn't Oregon just legalize pot? Tax the stoners 30Â per joint.
In the immortal words of Socrates, who said; 'I drank what?'
Wait, so we'd use an actual usage fee for transportation?
Nope, can't do that - how else could we hide the pork spending for streetcars and light rail projects that no one uses?
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
I lived in Oregon for about 25 years.
I never understood the studded tire thing. Everyone gets these things put on their vehicle and then tear up the roads in the Willamette Valley for 5 months on the off chance that it might snow one day out of the winter, and that one day everyone just stays home anyway while the local news stations have non-stop coverage of empty freeways while some asshole stands on top of the hill on the Sunset Highway in front of a camera van saying how treacherous the road conditions are.
I now live in the midwest where we've had snow on the ground since the day after Christmas, and NOBODY has studded tires, and very few people use chains. People that don't know how to drive in it, or don't have 4WD / AWD stay home or carpool with someone who does. The highway department plows the highways, and there are private citizens that have plow attachments for their trucks that do their neighborhood streets and make money plowing parking lots for local businesses.
Studded tires are fucking stupid and should just be banned. Get some chains and keep them in the trunk if you need traction devices.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Accidents cause a lot of damage too, probably a lot more than studs.
I've passed through areas that disallowed studs (but I had them since I was from elsewhere), and actually avoided being part of multi-vehicle pileups because of them. The guy in front of me... no studs... well he joined the pileup.
This ALWAYS happens, be it gas, or water, or electricity, or whatever. People are encouraged to conserve, because the utililty has an emergency. Once conservation occurs, however, then the utililty states "oh, we're not selling enough now, we need to raise prices!". it's lose lose: use less, they raise prices, use more, they jack you for overuse.
They used to say they were using taxes to modify people's behavior to get them to do better things. The whole Sin Tax idea. Now they're taxing good behavior too. In other words, they're just plain greedy.
Uh... yeah. With whom are you arguing exactly?
I hate grammar Nazi's.
Per Federal Law, the Gas Tax goes into a fund called the Highway Trust Fund. Per Congressional mandate this is then handed back to the states directly (under a few abuses of federal money such as mandatory 21 drinking age) with a small factor applied so that more populous states provide a small percentage of their revenue to smaller states to maintain the interstates in those states.
Typically these factors for larger states like California, Texas and New York are about 96%. States like Montana, and other heavily rural states receive about 120% of their citizens gas taxes. The exception is Alaska which typically gets almost 180% because the funds are used to fund not just highways but rural programs that are not highway based (plane and emergency services to remote villages, ferry service, etc). But though the percentage difference is high the actual dollar figure is very low in the case of Alaska due to it's extremely small population. The vast majority of states receive back 99.X% back of their revenue where the less than 1% is used to fund Federal DOT including primarily FHWA and their initiatives.
Either way, FHWA itself consumes ~1% of the money and in the process uses those funds to support the publication of nearly all the major highway design standards, best practices, research and testing that is done. It is because of these initiatives that highway deaths have essentially bottomed out, capacity of the highways has dramatically increased, operational efficiencies have gone up, signing has standardized and innovative interchange designs continue to be developed. There are very good reasons for the federal split, primarily because some states would have absolutely no incentive to maintain interstates in thier state because they are not used. A primary example is I-15 as it passes through Arizona for several miles as it transitions from Nevada to Utah. There are no exits within this length meaning that I-15 in Arizona serves no purpose to Arizona. There are many other instances where were there not federal allocations of money the states would have no incentive to maintain a section of interstate.
Though I would personally like to see the federal gas tax scaled back and the states raise their own so more money stays with the states without the federal requirements there are very good reasons not to. The only thing that must change is that up until 2008 the entire highway system was maintained solely with gas tax revenue. The continued insistence of not raising gas taxes has had the result that the government is borrowing money to maintain the system AND we are underfunding the maintenance as it is. We will have more major failures like I-35 as a result.
It's also been my experience that those people running around screaming all government bad have absolutely no experience with government efficiency other than standing in line at the DMV. For the most part government outside a few key departments is highly efficient, devoted and looking after the taxpayer. The notables exceptions start with the DOD who wastes more money in a year than the rest of government combined in a decade.
It's not as simple as it used to be (unplugging a cable), but as soon as there is a useful reason to do it, how long do you think it will be before somone is selling the service?
Winding back may be difficult, but in this case you will simply be not recording travel.
Best result might be to just halve or quarter the sensor responses, then you can keep track for servicing etc, while still cutting your tax bill.
I'm guessing that wasn't on their radar screen...
One can be malnourished and overweight, or even gaining weight. There's more to nourishment than calories.
Dilbert RSS feed
Miles driven does nothing to the road compared to pounds per square inch.
If that is the case, then an automobile causes more damage than an 18 wheeler. A passenger car puts 30 PSI on the ground. An 18 wheeler puts about 10+ PSI on the ground.
Sure your car weighs 1/10th as much, but the two front tires of a big rig have more contact area than your entire car.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Yup.
The silly thing is that studded tires don't really help if you're driving in snow. They only help on ice. On dry pavement they actually lengthen your stopping distance. They might make some sense if you live east of the Cascades but in western Oregon they might be helpful 2 or 3 days out of the year if that. I've never had them and never missed them.
To answer the AC who posted before you, they tried to put a tax of like $25/tire when you buy them on studded tires a few years ago but the outcry made them drop the idea. Whatever happened to the idea that you should pay the cost of your road damage rather and forcing it on to everyone?
Those are some very optimistic numbers and odd math. I dunno about you but I don't drive an 8000lb car. Not even a 4000lb car but a big modern car with lots of passengers could be that much.
Take a look at this and the linked PDF:
http://www.vabike.org/vehicle-weight-and-road-damage/
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
No you don't. You're believing the MPG on the sticker, which is complete horse-shit. Not only does it report overly efficient on some cars, on others it reports that they are less efficient than they really are. It's a 40+ year old standard that needs to be revised. For decent millage estimates check out consumer reports "Actual MPG ratings" on their site. They actually drive the cars on a set course of half highway, half city driving and then post the numbers. They vary wildly from what's on the sticker.
22-30mpg is crap. I've had better mileage than that for over a decade even on US made autos.
It may be crap, but it's still far better than the gas millage a poorly maintained vehicle will get. I've worked on cars that were getting between 1 and 5MPG for years before I ran into the owner and offered to check it out for them. Replacing a simple sensor or plug can suddenly gain the car 10 to 15mpg in some cases. Improving your millage from 25 to 35 is a nice 40% improvement but not that big of a deal. Going from 2mpg to 15 is a 650% improvement.
I was not contesting that trucks do more damage, just that it is the ground pressure that makes the difference. If it were ground pressure, than we should ban bicycles (90 PSI) and all drive tanks (15 PSI).
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
This sounds like the typical politician's waffle, failure to bite the bullet and try to pass their bloated payroll on to taxpayers, instead of being stern and advising the employees that they will need to reduce wages and benefits by 20%. This is better than laying off 20% of the employees.
They will find out that taxpayers can bite, and some taxpayers are rabid in their convictions, which can be fatal.
These inconsiderate oafs who walk our roadways and trammel our sidewalks need to pay their fair share, let's stick it to them.
The Big Rigs do cause more road damage, but where I live I'd blame Cal Trans for building poor quality roads. An 11 inch thick road bed is not thick enough and I believe that's the standard around these parts.
You know the old saying: "They gitcha comin' and they gitcha goin'".
Then permanently separate road tax from fuel for everyone. Bottom line - fuel efficient vehicles need to provide a financial benefit to their owners.
Bingo. The only reason road funding from gasoline taxes worked in the first place is that, once upon a time, most cars weighed about the same and got close enough to the same mileage that road usage was roughly proportional to gasoline usage. Now even among gas-fueled vehicles that's not true, and it'll only get worse as the percentage of non-gasoline cars increases.
Road infrastructure serves a common good outside of personal usage. It facilitates the free flow of goods and services that allow our society to function. It allows Fry's Groceries or Safeway to constantly get shipments of fresh meat and produce. It allows UPS to deliver that nifty new Amazon or Newegg item that you got with "free" shipping. It allows the ambulance or the fire engine to get to your house. It allows pretty flower-covered monstrosities to get pulled slowly down Pasadena streets so that ABC and CBS have viewers to sell to advertisers.
Perhaps the gasoline "road use" is obsolete and should be abolished, with road funding coming from from general taxes. Of course this would piss off the tax-gasoline-out-of-existence people and so has no chance of happening.
My 2900 pound 1998 Neon got 40 MPG. 5 speed, no A/C. If it wasn't a piece of shit I'd be driving it today.
One should pay for the miles they wear down the road. Simple: each year when ones car is inspected the mileage is checked and sent to DMV which will in turn tax accordingly. You don't pay then that car should have it legal registration revoked.
A per mile tax is very likely to have unintended negative environmental consequences. Drivers of low mileage vehicles that would otherwise pay a lot of gas tax will certainly opt for the per mileage tax instead. The lower their gas mileage, the more incentive a driver will have to pay per mile rather than per gallon. So this tax will make it cheaper to drive inefficient cars. The driver can then afford to buy more gas and drive more miles than they could with a per gallon gas tax, with the concomitant negative effects on the environment, green house gasses, etc. Oregon will blaze a new trail in anti-environmental tax policy.
Big rigs are what damage the roads. If they pay for the damage they do it gets spread around to all of us and doesn't penalize all of us who try to drive efficient cars.
http://goo.gl/Meqg1
Non bene pro toto libertas venditur auro
Americans talking about fuel prices and mileage, hilarious. You do realise the reason all your cars are enormous and get shit mileage is because there is no incentive for manufacturers to do otherwise? If you taxed your fuel at anything beyond negligible rates then maybe people would be more inclined to get smaller and more fuel-efficient cars. Yes yes, I know America is a big place and you need to drive long distances blah blah. Two things, nobody forced you to spread out over the entire continent, and nobody forced you to sprawl your towns across miles and miles of suburbs. "Hey let's build all our towns based on the automobile whose fuel prices will clearly never ever rise from these 1950s prices" derp
Well, at least everyone has some water. They had to ration somehow. Very little of the cost of city water is the actual water. Treating, pumping, and delivery systems are a fixed cost and halving the amount delivered does little to lower the cost per costumer.
Making cars more efficient is a desirable result. Having the owners of the efficient cars pay less tax is a good way to get that result to happen. More efficient cars are also, on average, smaller and lighter so they cause less wear to the roads.
Going to a mileage-based tax is a bad idea because it removes that incentive. If tax revenue falls too much, raise the tax rate to compensate. Yes, it will punish SUV owners - as it should.
Unless you are an oil field worker, I cannot imagine how a person who would call themselves Gen Y could ever end up in the third world without being upper middle class.
I do not.
I believe that our national security would be better served by not acting as Israel's protector.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I'm all late, but seriously, the way to pay for highways already exists and many states are already using it. It's called a toll road. You just need to charge hybrids twice as much at the booth. You just need to give them "loser" license plates so that they can be easily identified.
Ops, I shuld have usd the prevuwe but in.
Some people aren't based in North America or Europe. Many weren't even born there!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I wouldn't call anyone Gen Y who wasn't American or possibly Canadian. Difference of usage, I suppose.
They should charge commercial entities , not consumer market, those semi-trailers cause the most wear and tear( and damage to these roads) are not taking enough of the cost, why should consumers have to pay for them. Considering cost of a hybrid car nearly 35k, which no consumer will pay regardless till they come down to 20k range, the consumer market is being hurt the most, added costs of vehicle monthly cost and being taxed on it as well hardly seems the right thing to do.
Actually, I'm talking about the car's trip computer, which gives a second-by-second live MPG, and a rolling average. I also know how much petrol I put in the tank and how far I travel before it's all gone, and I can confirm that the car's computer is roughly accurate (enough so that I don't notice a discrepancy). I get about 42 on the average count on my day to day mixed usage. It goes up to about 55 when I do a long cross country trip, and down to about 32 if I spend an unusual amount of time city driving. I should clarify that these are Imperial Gallons.
I have no idea what the brochure promised; it was second hand when I bought it. You're probably right, and the brochure probably promised 70 MPG or something absurd, but that's not what I'm talking about.
Why's that?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Y
I can't find anything about regional specificity.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
If you're trying to be fair you'd also have to add a Z term to account for the natural degradation of the road that happens even if nobody is driving on it. Things like rain, freeze/thaw cycles, and sunlight.
Yes, I only thought of that after making my post, as somebody later in the thread commented on just that.
Or it could be sad that Cal Trans is building roads that are thick enough for the 95% of vehicles that weigh less than 10 tons. This should please that 95% of motorists because it saves them money, and means that they are not subsidizing other people, which reeks of socialism blah bah blah
sustainable living
I fail to see the problem. When you reach the tipping point, just start taxing something else.