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Oregon Extends Push To Track, Tax Drivers Per Mile
schwit1 writes "Oregon is moving ahead with a controversial plan to tax motorists based on the number of miles they drive as opposed to the amount of fuel they consume, raising myriad concerns about cost and privacy. The problem for lawmakers is that the existing per-gallon gas tax has hit a point of diminishing returns, as Americans drive less and vehicles become more fuel efficient. Economists and civil libertarians are concerned about the Oregon pilot project in large part because some mileage meters can track and record residents' every vehicular move. Rick Geddes, a Cornell University professor, said the basic device is okay because it is simply attached to a vehicle's computer, which cannot track locations. However, Geddes said privacy concerns could resurface should governments expand the program and use SmartPhone or apps to track movements and reward motorists who avoid congested roads and drive during off-peak hours. Mark Perry, a University of Michigan scholar, says the GPS or 'black box' system is 'particularly untenable.'" Per-car tracking and taxation has been a long time coming in Oregon, and it's not the only state where such an idea's been floated.
They can put in a tracking device when they pay for:
- the device
- the power it draws
- the added gas the weight requires
- and a per mile fee for access to my private life
why we're trying to over-complicate this? Take the odometer reading at annual inspection and be done with it.
Will there be corner cases where someone gets screwed under this system? Sure.
Is it worth all the trouble, expense, and privacy violations of being 100% perfect when 80% is good enough? No. Not even a little.
"I am hardly a tin foil hat wearing type but, the problem with this is that like every other means to create databases that track/document individuals or groups, they will eventually end up being mined for data that will likely violate your right to privacy. "
The top comment in that link to the California link is spot on. I just wish I could go back in time and tell him how deep the NSA rabbit hole goes.
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=139566&cid=11681212
Why not just put a tax on tires? Larger SUV tires pay more and bicycle tires pay the least...
As an Oregon resident, this seems silly and a complete waste of taxpayer $$$
If the intent is that people should pay some amount per mile to cover the cost of road maintenance, just set the per-gallon gas tax equal to $desired_revenue_per_mile / average_mpg. This has the same overall effect as setting a direct per-mile tax, without the tracking nonsense.
This will be "unfair" compared to a mileage-tracking system in that people with more fuel-efficient cars will pay less than their share, and people with less fuel-efficient cars will pay more. But that seems reasonable from the perspective of pricing negative externalities: maybe people who use more gas per mile should be taxed more per mile.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Why not just use the values from that?
Vehicles go in once a year, tack it onto the registration afterwards.
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Use taxes are aboutas fair as you're going to get.
Someone gets screwed in ever model, but you're going to have to break a few eggs.
You could avoid the monitoring if you wanted. Whomever does car inspections up there already knows how many miles the average Oregonian drives - and knows how many miles you drove since your last registrations if you have a history. Bill you your projected taxes based on average or previous driving history, and then fix any overages/underages in your next registration. Set a floor or a cap on the whole tax or on underages/overages if you think it makes for a better tax plan. ....and you can do it all without installing a black box.
just tax electricity. Everyone benefits from roads, and you don't need to track were people are going.
OTOH, Oregon is the bastion of 'We want X! what we have to pay for it? that's an outrage!"
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
the Oregonians who drive into Washington so they don't pay either WA sales tax or OR state taxes. :)
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
I am not from Oregon and maybe the laws differ, but in my state there is required yearly inspections where you get the little sticker on the windshield. I do not understand why one couldn't simply write down the mileage from the odometer once a year during your required state inspection, and that mileage is submitted to the state as the amount to tax you on? (You of course would get a copy of the form for your own records). Why have a device that tracks anything at all when there is already an odometer that does exactly what they want, track mileage! Use the existing services - mandatory state inspection - and bam, done. No tracking, no extra expenses.
Of course, I am not sure why you would want to tax mileage in the first place. I'd rather raise the gas taxes, and if people driving big 4-wheel-drive jeeps 1 hr each way to work can't afford it, then maybe it will finally prompt some rethinking about what cars we buy and how we do this whole jobs and commute thing. I would like to see more telecommuting, etc, for example. (But I would guess there would instead be an uprising from anti-tax people that want their big jeep rather than simply thinking basic economics, so probably wouldn't happen like this anyway).
As an Oregonian I can say right away, this is a partisan biased post. It isn't the big bad Government floating this idea to take yer moneys. Rather, we have lots and lots of more efficient vehicles, and there is a strong cultural push to move away from Big Oil. So we want to have our tax structure set up so that it is ready for that; if everybody bought a hybrid today, next year almost no road repairs would get done, because we wouldn't have the tax revenue. And with the same number of miles driven, there would be the exact same need for revenue. So if we can succeed in tying those related things together, then we'll have a forwards-looking tax code.
As for the meters, that is just for a pilot program the real program will not use that, it will use odometer checks. If you've ever lived in Oregon, the idea that we'd require GPS trackers is really funny. Left, right, center, nobody would support that here. And we have well trained politicians because when they do something weird, we just put it on the ballot and over-rule them. And in the State Legislature, people who pushed bills that got overturned by the voters get primaried out... every single time! That is how you do it, people.
Note to editors: if the story is running on foxnews, you're pushing a biased partisan version that won't have the facts.
How are the numbers read from the device that plugs into the car computer?
If it has a simple numeric display that the inspection agent reads and records every year, that seems to have little potential for abuse or privacy violations. But if they electronically read the device, then who knows what information it's reporting. It could be tracking every time you exceed the highway speed limit. Or might be tracking every panic stop. Or it could be recording how agressively you drive. Or recording what time of day you drive. Or any number of things that may be a privacy invasion.
It's not clear how this basic device handles driving on out of state roads, and if it doesn't have any special handling for this, then it seems that it could easily be replaced with an annual odometer reading.
If nothing else, this device will spur innovation in car computer hacks or OBD passthrough ports that restrict the miles passed through to the device.
So the government wants us to buy more fuel efficient cars to the point they offer huge tax and business incentives to push that. Resulting in picking winners and losers and complicating the tax code further. Now that cars are getting more fuel efficient, they want to complicate taxes for driving to make sure those people that got the incentives for the fuel efficient cars still pay taxes for roads.
How about this...
NO tax/business incentives for fuel efficient cars.
Raise the gas tax as necessary to support road development.
Results:
You've simplified the tax system (and no longer are picking winners/losers).
But you're also encouraging people to drive less, use public transportation, and drive more fuel efficient cars.
I predicted this kind of crap 20 years ago when I saw what the Netherlands did with LPG cars -- they slapped a tax on it such that you had to drive 20km a year to break even.
This supports the theory they just want the money, and environmental concerns are a red herring.
Never forget that parsimonious theory: they just want your money so they can turn around and spend it on you to your, ummm, cheers?
"But...but how are they supposed to pay for roads?". Thus do you fall into their trap. It's about encouraging behaviors to ameliorate the looming end of the world, isn't it?
How's that theory holding up vs. this one?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I wonder how these devices will work on vehicles with positive ground. It looks like it might be time to invest in older British cars.
Time to offend someone
Geddes said privacy concerns could resurface should governments expand the program and use SmartPhone or apps to track movements and reward motorists who avoid congested roads and drive during off-peak hours.
Oregon (the body of people) has a reasonable case for wanting usage taxes to be based, at least in part, on mileage. The economic case makes sense, and there is a simple solution: Each time the data is collected, calculate the amount of money owed, show it to the driver for approval, and give the driver the option to retain the data for appeal. If the driver accepts the amount owed and declines the option for data retention, the data used to generate the amount owed is discarded -- never entered into the database.
If it is only about calculating the fees owed, then that is the only datapoint that needs to be retained once the driver has waived his right to contest the tax. Oregon gets to include mileage in its road use taxation model, and drivers retain the right to keep their travels free from government surveillance. Everybody wins except those with an ulterior motive.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
What you describe is the actual Oregon program, except for step 3 where we combine having traffic engineers that prioritize projects based on need with dividing some of it by County.
The crazy-making in the article falsely conflates the pilot program, which uses GPS because they can collect the data more easily, with the real policy issue that we're debating here, which will use the odometer readings.
The OBDII port is there for on-board diagnostics and to facilitate repairs. It is NOT there as a facility for the State to invade peoples' privacy.
I use the OBDII port with Torque Pro to monitor my engine and take data. The only time I am not using it is when my Nissan dealer is using it as a means to facilitate repairing my vehicle. The port in my vehicle is not available to the State, or my Insurance Company, or anyone else to use, and fuck them if they think I am going to allow it.
Again people, this is OREGON, not California, there are NO YEARLY INSPECTIONS. You don't even get inspected when you renew your registration.
Sure, you could spend a fortune to institute them, but the DMV can't keep up with their current workload as it is. Go there for one simple thing when the open, and wait there for hours. If you're lucky, you get out in time for lunch. (Ok, it's not always that bad, but it's still pretty much on target.)
1979 Landcruiser.
Have gnu, will travel.
We're debating the article, which barely mentions odometers (and even then, in the context of being connected to a GPS).
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Heck, my car doesn't have any electronic parts at all. So am I exempt from the tax?
So, the official story is "carbon emissions are bad", so tax gas guzzlers through gas taxes.
People buy smaller often crappier cars and use less gas, gas revenues go down. Response is... "we need to find new ways to tax!".
Doesn't this prove to anyone even slightly honest in their ideas, that it's not about "clean-anything" but about tax revenue?
Between all the taxes we already pay, claiming they don't have enough money to lay down some pavement is absurd. Taxed Enough Already - that's what T.E.A. in tea party stands for.
That is a regressive tax. Poor people with old cars that get bad mileage pay more, rich people with new Prius pay less.
The goal is to tax the RICH people. With this plan, old cars may not get meters, new and expensive cars do.
They can also raise the cost per mile in downtown or expensive neighborhoods.
Who cares if there is a shooting while you are taking a short cut, the cops will know you were there and come to your door.
Of course, I'm probably being naive in assuming that Oregon would replace their current gas taxes with this rather than just add the mileage tax to their existing gas taxes, but if they did, why wouldn't folks in neighboring states (near the border) just buy all their gas in Oregon and avoid paying taxes on it?
Oh, wait, Oregon is about the only place left that doesn't allow individuals to gas up their own cars. I suppose attendants could add an out-of-state gas tax for any sales to vehicles with out-of-state plates.
Or do that anyway even with continued gas taxes, charge a higher rate for out of state.
A good portion of my life I worked construction, specifically building stores in malls around the country. I would drive to one job, stay in a hotel until it was finished, then drive to the next. I would easily drive 50,000 miles a year, with the vast majority of it not being in the state that the car was registered in. So, under this system, if I was an Oregon resident, I would have to pay the mileage tax based on my total miles to Oregon to maintain their roads, which I hardly used, while also paying gas taxes in all of the other states that I am actually driving in to maintain their respective road systems. Gee, it's hard to see how I might think this idea is complete bull shit, even without thinking of the privacy aspect.
Oregon Voter Initiatives are often controversial, but if they try and push this legislation through, It seems likely there will be a voter initiative to ban such tracking based taxation and it will pass easily. People don't like this sort of thing.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
How much you wanna bet that they'll tax per mile, AND have a gas tax as well.
And if I happened to live in, say, Portland OR but routinely did summer road trips of a few thousand miles (say, visiting Portland Maine), I'm paying mileage tax on thousands of miles that I didn't drive in Oregon.
That sucks.
There was a ten-year stretch of my life when all I owned was a motorcycle. I still own a motorcycle and can be perfectly happy riding that most everywhere. No "on-board computer" to attach anything to, and good fucking luck trying to stick a GPS on it (cover patch antenna with tinfoil grounded to the frame, or just short out the coax leading to the antenna with a pin through it, or carry a GPS jammer with me).
Wow, so you're ready to dive in with both feet into the false narrative! Even knowing it is false. Wow. Just wow.
I've always wanted a device that I could use to tell me how many miles my car has gone. Maybe even a way to track individual trips by resetting it. Perhaps, since it's tied to the car's computer system, it can also track fuel usage and display my average fuel economy since the last time I reset it.
Seriously, though. I propose that states that want to implement use tax just read the odometer. For people who do a lot of out-of-state driving, they can buy/lease/rent a widget that plugs into whatever (probably OBDII) and use that in lieu of the odometer reading.
Here in the EU we often envy the enormous economical advantage you residents of the U.S.A. get from having to pay only half (roughly) of what we pay for the same amount of gas. Better mobility means better economy. And now you're about to be taxed for MOVING around? Wow... a couple more things like this or the NSA+FISA fiasco, and the unemplyment figures here will look very different :)
Bluetooth tracking has been used in many different areas. It's not required that a connection be even made. Sure this is just an extra grab by gov't to track everyone. Because it's already done via cell phone or bluetooth (that's in your car stereo) or license plate readers or traffic cameras, etc etc doesn't make it right.
I never knew anybody who drove to Vancouver to buy gas.
True, the excise taxes are different between the two states. But I picture folks from Vancouver (I have two brothers there) coming to Oregon to buy gas just so they don't have to get out and pump it themselves. :-D
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
There is no annual inspection in California either. Just smog check based on the age of the car. I'm not sure if smog occurs every year for anybody. You just get a notification for it when the registration renewal comes in. It's a small price to pay for not looking like Beijing when inversions occur.
. This is one of the big changes when you come from back East. In Virginia, I had two stickers on the windshield, one for inspection and another for tax. We also had emissions inspection every other year. In California you just have the registration sticker on your plate and smog.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Works over here (NZ) on diesel vehicles. When I had my last diesel I used to pay up front for kilometers (usually 10,000) for x amount of money. If you are ever stopped and found to not have enough kilometers to cover what is actually on your odometer you are fined. You can read about it here: http://www.nzta.govt.nz/vehicle/registration-licensing/ruc/index.html I had no problem paying them and thought it was a fair way of taxing. Much better than taxing at the pump like they do with gas. It was depressing when I started driving (I'm originally from WV) and looking at the amount of tax clipped on at the pump.
sigs are like a box of chocolates, they all suck remove the underscores to email me
"...as Americans drive less" Isn't the fuel tax meant to cover roads and etc, whose maintenance is at least loosely tied to their actual use? Therefore, if Americans drive less, why is more tax money necessary? This is just a grab for general ledger, nothing else.
Seems to make far more sense to me.
If they make it complex enough, you will not be able to contest it.
They make the rates on the roads dynamic by time and day.
They don't send a clear code for when and where you are, it is an encrypted cipher token bit that tells what rate zone you were approaching at
a potential high rate time. (For your safety)
The code in the box is a corporate secret. Not a government body but a private company that has contracted to do the work.
You have to spend big lawyer $$ to get the code from them for a case, then more $$$ to analyze it for bugs.
Then you have try and explain it to people too stupid to get out of jury duty.
Pi-lot Pro-gram noun \p-lt-pr-gram\
: a plan or idea floated by big bad Government to take yer moneys.
This is nonsensical if gas tax does not work then tack the equivalent into vehicle registration fees and or state taxes.
With millions of people you don't need any per person accuracy to arrive at statistically the same financial result there is certainly no reason at all to know how many miles each person individually has driven if your only goal is to collect taxes. Fuel taxes have never been accurate. Even if you assumed the same fuel economy you have no idea on which roads the gas purchased is used. For all you know someone could commute from Washington or California and never spend a dime at the pump in Oregon. The requirement for accuracy is bullshit.
Behind most of these things there is almost always a device company pushing adoption with lobbying/campaign contributions. Find it, publicize it and vote the offenders out of office.
How are owners of electric vehicles paying for their share of using public roads? (Hint; they are not)
Just get rid of the Tax all together. Collect sales taxes and be done with it. Why do we need a tax on everything? The government should not be in the business of manipulating the people by taxing them at different rates based on their behavior.
So allow people to save gas receipts from other states as an offset. Most people that drove less than 1000 miles out of state wouldn't bother.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
It depends on how it is implemented;
It tracking could be done as an op in where a standard rate would be applied if the data was taken from an odometer reading and discounts could be applied if the owner opted in to tracking.
Recording also makes a difference. For example there could be a running total of the number of miles traveled during off hours with no record of which day or exact time those trips were made. There could also be a system where the device queries a server to see if the vehicle is in a congested area and that mileage added to a running total of "congested area mileage" with no record of the exact location. Server logs may be an issue but that can be handled by proper rules.
Again people, this is OREGON, not California, there are NO YEARLY INSPECTIONS. You don't even get inspected when you renew your registration.
Sure, you could spend a fortune to institute them, but the DMV can't keep up with their current workload as it is. Go there for one simple thing when the open, and wait there for hours. If you're lucky, you get out in time for lunch. (Ok, it's not always that bad, but it's still pretty much on target.)
California inspection stations are privately owned and are no more overwhelmed with workload than any other service station. Do some states have only DMV owned inspections stations?
Sorry, why does the DMV matter? I grew up in Pennsylvania and now live in Massachusetts. Both states require yearly vehicle inspections (not just emissions) and in both states this is done by private repair shops authorized by the state to conduct inspections. You pay your standardized fee for the inspection, and a portion goes to the government.
Enforcement is simple: you don't have an up-to-date inspection window sticker when you get pulled over, or are sitting in a parking lot and a cop drives by, you get a fine, and it's a moving violation which means the legal system gets some extra money out of you as well if you choose to fight it.
Sure to implement the tax at inspection time would require some extra infrastructure to maintain records and start collecting the tax owed, but as far as I can tell it's a pretty low cost, low effort thing to start inspections.
I think your road tax should be based on the weight of your car x the miles driven x the number of axles, since that is the best available proxy for how much damage your driving does to the roads. GPS tracking would be required so that you are not taxed for miles driven outside your state of residence, or, if all states do this, you could be taxed by the state where you actually drive. Ironclad privacy laws would be required, such as making GPS data on individuals inadmissible in court and destroying it six months after the bill is sent out, with the caveat that you would not be able to dispute your bill after this period.
Poorer people have to life further away from major city centers due to housing costs.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Is "Keep Oregon Weird" I think. So all this makes sense there.
The only one claiming it's a false narrative is you. As far as we know, you're the liar. Well, we could read TFA, but this is Slashdot, so, no.
I have to wonder if instituting such a law would actually have unintended negative revenue consequences. I think that most people are used to a gas tax and don't even give it a second thought when they're buying gas. It's just part of how much a gallon of gas costs.
Now tell people that they're going to be taxed for every mile they drive. All of a sudden, it becomes much more visceral and intrusive - "How much will I be taxed for a family trip to visit the aquarium in Newport?". I can see people deciding to simply not go places (and thus to not spend money on food/lodging/entertainment which is bad for the economy) as well as people who just want to give the finger to the government for intruding in their lives. Western Oregon is already a bicycle haven and Portland has outstanding public transit which would only become more popular if people are thinking about how much tax they'll owe on their commutes to work.
If Oregon is having such a hard time making revenues, then maybe they should finally institute a sales tax. I know, I know ... sales tax is not "progressive" - and Oregon is the most "progressive" place on planet earth. But forcing a car-miles-tax on lower-income people who live in rural Oregon and who can't just hop on "TriMet" to commute to work isn't progressive either. It's punishment for not living in Portland.
I just think that such a law would have wide-ranging and very negative unintended consequences.
Gasoline taxes go overwhelmingly to highway maintenance. And wear to highways increases exponentially to weight. For example, a tractor trailer causes approximately 9600 (this is not a typo!) times the amount of wear per mile than does a typical passenger car. So simply figure out a reasonable budget for highway maintenance, and apportion it accordingly by vehicle/weight. SUVs pay more than Priuses who pay more than motorcycles.
Long-distance semis crossing the state can pay a toll based on odometer readings based on entry and exit to the state and a standardized damage cost per mile.
Taxing by Miles Driven is absolute nonsense when discussing 'road wear'. The wear on the road rises exponentially as the weight of the vehicle increases. This must be included or all the light cars are subsidizing the wear caused by the heavy ones. So accounting for the weight of the vehicle, we need to come up with units of (weight * distance) For Example, A Harley that drives a thousand miles would get something like ( 1000 lbs * 1000 miles ) = 1,000,000 lb*miles And, a Semi Truck that drives a thousand miles would get something like ( 50,000 lbs * 1000 miles ) = 50,000,000 lb*miles The tax rate would increase with the weight of the vehicle, accounting for the fact that the wear is exponentially growing with weight... Then you take your 'lb*miles' value and multiply by the tax rate. This is at least not completely moronic... but probably still doesn't reflect the true reality of the situation.
The gov already has an answer to privacy concerns like this. They have already implemented it. I do, for the record, dislike and distrust it, but, they have one: Seal the records.
An accountant friend explained to me once why a bookie he knows reports 100% of his income to the IRS, including the illegal cash business. The reasoning was simple, if the police suspect an illegal business but can't fully prove it, they can ask the IRS to check out whether it looks like you evaded taxes.
Now, the police can't access your records, the IRS, by law, must keep those records secret. However, they can, review and audit themselves. So, the police can tip off the IRS that you have an illegal business, but if you reported all the income, all the IRS can do is say "Everything looks in order".
So simple: Seal the records with a traffic tax agency, who is forbidden by law from releasing any personally identifying information, except for the purpose of prosecuting evasion of the taxes which they are charged with collecting.... say until.... 75 years after the death of the identified individual.
Then they will secretly share it all with the NSA, who will use it to send anonymous tips to law enforcement to built parallel evidence chains against people without revealing where the tip came from. No problem!
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Again people, this is OREGON, not California, there are NO YEARLY INSPECTIONS.
Doesn't matter. All the people that [ have | waste ] the time to comment and mod heavily on slashdot are from California, which is like the whole world right?
If the intent is that people should pay some amount per mile to cover the cost of road maintenance, it should be by vehicle weight and not just distance traveled.
The guy in the Fiat is not going to close to the road damage that and SUV driver is going to do carting around town in their Canyonaro.
Gas tax would punish the SUVs more but this OR idea punishes road destroying gas guzzlers the same as small eco cars? I have to be wrong about this. Is big oil backing this? The auto industry?
What about OR residents who do most of their driving out of state? Taxing out-of-state driving is probably a constitutional problem.
What about people with broken odometers?
The problem for lawmakers is that the existing per-gallon gas tax has hit a point of diminishing returns, as Americans drive less and vehicles become more fuel efficient.
Oh whoa is us, people are driving less, and cars are more efficient, so we need to create a new tax, to get more of everyones money.
Bullshit.
While people may be driving less, and cars may be more efficient, and tax revenues from gasoline may not be increasing or may even be declining ... the part of this equation that the "leaders" are not discussing .... it's now also cheaper to build and repair roads.
"Park City man invents better pothole repair"
http://www.ksl.com/?sid=14568328
Giles and UDOT agree the process is 60 percent to 75 percent cheaper than patching, and that saves taxpayer money.
What damages roads ? Trucks and Buses
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asphalt_concrete
Traffic damage mostly results from trucks and buses. The damage a vehicle causes is proportional to the axle load raised to the fourth power,[7] so doubling the weight an axle carries actually causes 16 times as much damage.
So, have Oregons gas tax revenues decreased 60-75 percent ? ... remaining pretty steady, and increasing, due to a recent increase in the gas tax rate.
http://www.portlandmercury.com/BlogtownPDX/archives/2012/02/07/factcheck-is-oregons-gas-tax-revenue-decreasing
Nope
So, how many miles of roads are in Oregon ?
http://www.oregon.gov/ODOT/TD/TDATA/pages/rics/publicroadsinventory.aspx#Oregon_Mileage_Report
2010 Total Miles 74,522 Public Road Miles 59,151
2011 Total Miles 74,508 Public Road Miles 59,148
2012 Total Miles 74,589 Public Road Miles 59,262
Looks like public road miles, in Oregeon, increased by 111 miles from 2010 to 2012, which amounts to a whopping 0.18% increase.
So, the cost to maintain and repair roads has been significantly decreased due to road building technology improvements, and gas tax revenues are increasing, and the rate was increased recently, and the miles of public roads has barely increased, and the vast majority of damage done to roads is from Trucks and Buses, not cars.
Oregonians, you are being screwed.
I'm guessing this will fail legal tests at the federal level due to interstate commerce laws and privacy, but I could be wrong... from the article:
The state can't tax out-of-state anything, generally, but certainly not an activity (like driving) performed out of state (buying something online and shipping it in-state would be different). It's true that technology could allow them to determine the difference, as ShanghaiBill implied, but the court could rule that since there is no way to do this without infringing privacy (which itself is legally grey where driving is concerned), that the law loses based on the catch-22. At best, it could be forced to allow self-reporting of non-taxable miles (much like many states rely on self-reporting of out-of-state purchases for use-tax purposes).
It's an interesting conflict, however, that will certainly go to the judicial system to sort out, if the law ever passes.
To get your petrol there for your gas tank to hold, they have to push VERY heavy trucks along a lot of public roads. Large oil powered or coal powered stations take it by pipe or rail, avoiding most of that.
So add the tax on to the trucker getting the petrol to where you want it and that tax must remain on the gasoline you use.
If it's really about road maintenance/wear.
(note: you also need to cover the costs of policing and the costs of accidents at least to the cost of the road)
How will they maintain these slim margins if they have to oversee vehicle trackers?
The problem for lawmakers is that the existing per-gallon gas tax has hit a point of diminishing returns
Because when you do exactly nothing to get 30-40 cents a gallon for someone elses product and distribution diminishing returns is really meaningful.
You can be sure they will keep their 100% profit tax per gallon and tax the consumer per mile.
For everyone who lives next to Oregon.
Cross the border to fill up and pay no petrol tax.
[citation needed]
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Privacy concerns aside, I think this may affect poorer people more than the affluent.
I base my opinion on some of the places I use to work. The offices, which were usually HQ or some other large corporate office, were always in very affluent areas. Great for professionals but not affordable for the laborers who worked in the restaurants and malls and such surrounding the offices. The affordable housing was further away, and if this kind of tax is passed it is going to affect the people who cannot afford to move closer to their job, or do not have the ability to get a job closer to where they live (low income areas usually have much less opportunity for employment).
There are a lot of people who don't really have many good options for living close to their place of employment. This kind of tax would unfairly impact them while sparing those who can afford to uproot and live closer to their place of employment.
I, for one am a long time Apple computer hater. I don't understand their appeal, or the Apple Tax(tm) and would never pay money for one of their laptops or desktops. That being said, I fucking love their mobile hardware. I got an iPhone 3Gs shortly after they were released and got all the non-S versions on launch day since. I bought an iPad 1 shortly before the 2 came out, not being familiar with Apple's release schedule... kicking myself a bit, I still really enjoyed the light form factor for doing webby stuff from bed or the couch. Now that my iPad 1 is showing serious signs of aging, I'm definitely looking forward to buying either a Mini with retina or go all in for an iPad Air.. These tablets are just really well made, and although I love open source and linux, I just can't stand using any version of Android. It just turns me off, I'm not sure if its the UI or.. what, I just don't like the feel of Android on a phone or a tablet.
The closer and closer these tablets come to paper thin the more excited I become. Time to pawn off some household items to drop $500 on just the baseline model of the iPad Air...
640k ought to be enough for anyone.
Mileage doesn't work because you get taxed when you drive out of state. GPS doesn't work because it's big brother in your car and it's a political nightmare. Refusing to acknowledge that non gas using vehicles cause wear and tear also doesn't work, especially as society shifts towards using more and more of them.
The reality is that every vehicle on the road has a certain impact. The only way to avoid double taxation for fuel with a mileage based tax is to simply charge a large annual fee for the license tab. You then couple this with repealing the gas tax entirely so that you aren't taxing people twice over. You could even make it affordable by putting the price into peoples taxes and letting people take payroll deductions so that they don't get hit with large fees every year.
You can then charge a given amount based on the weight of the vehicle. Using the weight of the vehicle is arguably the fairest way to do this as the vehicles weight is the largest contributing factor to the amount of wear and tear it causes to infrastructure. This way commercial vehicles get charged appropriately for the greater wear and tear they inflict while small vehicles that don't cause a lot of wear and tear get charged less.
Everyone uses the road system and it's only fair that everyone pays for it. Think about, what happens if the dreams of Tesla motors and similar companies are realized and were no longer using gas at all?
Let them claim an exemption and tell them to keep their receipts.
Make them either fix it or pay based on some assumed/average number of miles?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Then start an annual odo inspection and use existing auto mechanic / dealers as the inspection points with huge penalties for fraud.
I'm not a fan of Virginia's safety inspections because I know they are pointless, but at least they let you do them, along with emissions inspections, at any number of local mechanic shops. So the infrastructure is built in and usually pretty speedy. That is as opposed to NJ inspections which at least in the 80's was a huge state run building with long lines that was dreaded by all.
Or Ohio who decided that the best way to start their emissions program in the late 90's (to avoid EPA sanctions for polluted counties) was to build from scratch an entire government run infrastructure at a huge cost. That was despite MANY studies showing they could do it cheaper, faster AND more effective by deploying mobile sniffers and literally paying people to fix their cars / buying out very old lost cause vehicles. Basically take care of the 10% of the cars making 90% of the pollution and let everyone else go about their day.
Anyway the point is, it does NOT have to be that hard or expensive to do an annual odo check. As to the accounting burden, it doesn't need to be DMV, it would be the treasury since they have to incorporate it into their tax system and all they need to know is one single number; miles driven. You know, EXACTLY like they have to do it using any other method of counting mileage.
Ideally they'ed even let you pre-pay with withholdings and let you adjust those withholdings based on expected miles per year. Don't own a car, don't withhold at all. Own two cars and drive 30k/yr, you might want to let them know that so you don't have sticker-shock when it comes time to pay that gas tax.
If you can't be good, be good at it!
Do some states have only DMV owned inspections stations?
Yup. Maryland at least. I think D.C. too.
Who gives you a receipt when you drive out of state? Lots of people cross the border to buy gas.
As for claiming exemptions, how could that exemption be audited without tracking where people drive?
Many good point but the reality is simple. The more efficient vehicles get the less revenue to maintain the roads. How do you deal with out of state driving such as commercial rigs registered here that travel the country? How do you deal with people from other states if there is no similar system. We have lots of people who live in Washington but cross into Oregon. 1) Put up tolls for any Washington registered drivers entering Oregon and make the toll sufficient to cover the bridge and roads. 2) Require a GPS device that only tracks mileage within specific coordinates but does not retain location history on all Oregon vehicles. I would however use RFID to report this information so when you pass certain roads it updates the count and you can be billed monthly. If you don't want to do this or never hit a checkpoint then you can submit estimates and payments and true up when you register your vehicle. This way you don't end up with a 5k bill just to register your vehicle. 3) Remove all state taxes from our gas stations for any vehicle with the installed device. This is the only way to fairly cover it. It levels the ground for the majority and ensures that out of state drivers contribute as well. If these devices were standard and there was reciprocity across state lines you'd simple have the device track by state and pay to each state accordingly. Furthermore i'm sick of Oregon paying the tab for the bridges when they are 95% of the time used by Washington residents. We pay for it out of our fuel taxes and if they only fill up in Washington they flood our roads, cause huge traffic jams, and pay nothing to maintain or upgrade them.
Adding a set amount of tax for every gallon might not be the best solution. Heavy vehicles cause more damage to the road, and have worse MPG, and thus pay more taxes then light cars. Light cars cause less damage to the road, have better MPG, and pay less than heavy. This sounds fair, but I assume a certain amount of maintenance to the road is necessary regardless of how many (and how heavy) vehicles traverse it. So a creative taxation method is probably required.
I wonder if the pumps could charge a diminishing tax rate. Lets say Oregon currently tacks on 5 cents per gallon. With a diminishing tax, the first gallon should be 10 cents, and 9 cents for the second gallon, and down to 5 cents for every gallon after 5. You would end up charging cars with small fuel tanks, like hybrids, slightly more per gallon than big consumers, like trucks, but overall you dont punish the people who adopt these great new technologies.
This just another attempt to shift the cost onto the less well off. It makes the efficient drivers subsidize the heavy vehicles. I don't know but my guess would be that the Koch brothers want you in a gas guzzler.
Color is added so that heating oil and diesel fuel can be taxed differently. Yet I can still put heating fuel in a truck, I just get fined if I get caught.
Require every car with a plug to use a special meter that collects tax on electricity differently, part of the cost of owning an electric car anyway is to be able to plug it in. Maybe even an RFID tag in the plug so the car can report where the 'fuel' was purchased so it can be audited/proven taxes are being collected. Someone can always cheat, but they get fined if they get caught. This way vehicles that get great mileage can continue to pay reduced rates to encourage using cars with low MPG (even though I don't think such a method works). Tax rates can then be set at both the federal and national level as desired.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
I can't be the only one that read the headline as Oregon Extends Push To Track Taxi Drivers Per Mile.
Who would think that solons in Oregon have bankrupted the state to such an extent that this would be needed. I thought that this was just a problem in the east.
You just know that there will be lots of exemptions for certain politicians / government agencies and their buddies. Only the poor slobs who do not have political pull will have to put up with this crap.
Oregon doesn't currently do yearly inspections of vehicles. Not for renewal, and there is no smog check.
No. The gas tax is NOT going way.
There's no way in hell, even in a more fuel efficient society, that the government is going to give up even a CENT of possible revenue.
If you think your government, from the goodness of their heart, are going to lighten your financial burdens in any way, shape or form, you're fucking deluded.
Yes, in a more fuel efficient society, the gas tax becomes less of a burden. That's not the same thing as "going away".
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
If you assume that consumption of gas is independent of price (totally ineslastic demand), then raising the tax will increase revenue. But in the real world, when prices go up consumption goes down, and at current prices it is very well possible that raising the tax rate will lower consumption enought to lower revenue -- at which point lowering the rate would be the way to raise more revenue.
The problem with a gas tax is that as energy-efficient vehicles become more common, the state's expenses (road maintenance) are becoming less and less correlated with fuel consumption. But since tracking drivers to collect actual usage tax is far worse, I agree that gas taxes are better.
You can legally reside in one state, while spending the vast majority of your time in another. It's quite common for people in college, for example.
Or even more likely, you want to make all the people that live in Portland but work in Vancouver save every gas receipt they ever get?
Anybody who understood basic high school kinetics should be saying the same thing!
Note: F= ma also is impacted by the speed limit. You could make heavier stuff go slower. Such as those massive farm machines or houses or industrial machines that take up 1.5 lanes of the highway. They are already a problem, moving slower wouldn't hurt.
The reality is that boat and train are BETTER ways to transport heavy items and they would be cheaper if WE didn't significantly subsidize trucking in our unfairly slanted highway taxes.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Does Apple sell cars in Oregon now?
The problem for lawmakers is that the existing per-gallon gas tax has hit a point of diminishing returns, as Americans drive less ...
If people are driving less, maybe we don't need to spend as much money building and maintaining roads.
Problem solved.
For people not to drive. And Auto business needs less car buyers.
Are they going to drop the state tax per gallon? Not to mention: "Papers please."
Seriously though, this is going to unjustly tax the rural areas where people have to drive further, get paid less, and gas costs more in the first place.
(Captcha: absurdly)
JUST RAISE THE DAMN GAS TAX!
Seriously, I can't believe that the government is going to setup yet ANOTHER giant bureaucracy that will effectively track our movements, when the obvious solution is to raise the gas tax rate to account for improved fuel efficiency.
If you Oregonians don't vote out every single nimrod that votes to even look into this boondoggle of an idea, you get what you deserve...
First, the lower operating cost (in part from not paying the GAS TAX which is a larger percent of the per-gallon price than Big Oil's profit margin) of electric cars is one of their selling points.... so this is typical left-wing bait-and-switch-then-misdirect
Second, if you wanna bill everybody for road usage "by the mile" (probably the fairest and certainly more fair than a gas tax that is never adjusted for individual car mileage) then you only need to do it by odometer checks (annual at vehicle inspection time, for example).
Any proposal to include tracking will provide NO MORE information about miles driven than the odometer and is simply about monitoring, manipulation, and/or control (either of the population generally, or of the individual). We have all the evidence we need from all the other govt programs that any program created to collect general info "for the public good" will end up having lots of info that government will later see as available for some other "good" use, leading to more invasive programs that get hidden from the public which use the data for other purposes. It's a slippery slope we have seen over and over again (it's only still theoretical for kittens and puppies who wake up every day to a "whole new unexplored world"....)
This is a really shortsighted plan.
If you drive 10,000 miles a year, the Cadillac driver getting 14mpg is now going to pay the same tax ($150) as the environmentally responsible driver with the Prius getting 42mpg. Or to put it another way, under the "old" gas tax system the Cadillac driver would pay approximately $214 in gas tax and the Prius owner would only pay about $71. The new system really promotes having a fuel efficient vehicle doesn't it?
And this doesn't even begin to take into account all the lost gas tax revenue for people mowing their yard and for RV's such as dune buggies, four wheelers, boats and jet skis.
Cars don't damage roads, under-regulated overloaded freight trucks hauling consumer goods do. Tax the logistics side of things because it's those a**holes who clog, destroy, and pollute our highways/freeways the most. Weight stations in my state don't do jack diddly to stop them. Higher taxes and fines will.
The people who do the most driving are the least able to handle these new fees.
Take total cost of maintaining and expanding motorist infrastructure for the year, divide by the number of registered vehicles, then use GVWR as a factor so heavier vehicles pay more than lighter vehicles. No tracking, and car-free folks aren't subsidizing what's a luxury item in that state. Win/win.
Furries make the internet go.
just legalize weed and tax it.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
.
I fail to see what the problem is here.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
What we need is an amendments to the US Constitution blocking blanket tracking of "US citizens" unless the court has approved it on suspicion of a felony criminal act by an individual, covering general privacy and something blocking requirements for an individual to purchase health insurance. Also something to reduce the burden of the individual to have to keep records. This isn't the space age or information age, it's the bureaucratic age.
*It's not what you can do for the Dark Side but what the Dark Side can do for you!*
why we're trying to over-complicate this? Take the odometer reading at annual inspection and be done with it.
Will there be corner cases where someone gets screwed under this system? Sure.
Is it worth all the trouble, expense, and privacy violations of being 100% perfect when 80% is good enough? No. Not even a little.
The problem becomes that the old analog counters can be set back (no I am going to give out citations, or explain how this is done, I am a auto mechanic and I have done these things myself, so I do know what I am talking about) and even with the digital read outs can be reset and or set at a certain mileage. Of course the digital read out is saved in you ECM (computer) so if you think that removing the battery will reset it your wrong, there is a Read/Write chip that saves the data indefinitely, obviously that leaves only one other way to reset digital readings.
Here in California, when you buy a NEW vehicle, you're exempt from the smog check for a period of time, I think it's 5 years. Then after that, you need the smog check done every other year. When you get your yearly registration form, it'll say whether you need to get it smogged or not.
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Complaining about seatbelts? You Americans have hundreds of more intrusive things to worry about, such as getting your testicles twisted by the TSA (or this mile tracking shit from TFA), so why bitch about something that is pure common sense?
I really see this falling to pieces when the 1st person who does the a large proportion of their driving out of state but happens to live inside of the state but is being forced to fit an odometer based device files a lawsuit against the state of Oregon. A GPS device might end up raising all sorts of civil rights questions however I do think a GPS device however could work (if the cost was low enough), If this device was only capable of being a sort of on/off switch while recording mileage i.e. find the users location then simply storing a true value when someone is within the state of Oregon and on a public road and a false value when someone is outside the state of Oregon and then keeping a count of how many miles a person does when that value is true (while only ever storing one location). The devices inability/unwillingness to keep a location history could be verified by independent academic review.
Surely 100% of the yearly driving of every citizen occurred in Oregon. No one ever leaves the beautiful state, right?
Doesn't all cars have a mile-counter already?
Why do the government need any extra boxes for that?
Just like how they got hooked on cigarette taxes.
13476/1000 = 13.476
3239/1500 = 2.1593
13.476*2.1593 = 29.552868
29.552868 * 29.552868 * 29.552868 * 29.552868 = 762778.66
That's a lot of tax!
Anyone who votes in favor of the state attaching a box to your car to "record mileage" needs to immediately check in to the nearest mental facility, as they are clearly psychotic and should not be allowed to walk the streets.
Corruption at every level of government has created massive unfunded liabilities that no city, county, or state will EVER be able to pay. And yet we have people howling about how we need to increase spending!! You can't tax people enough to pay for what the cities, counties, and states have already committed to if you confiscate all of their wealth. Seriously, people, this is where we are whether you like it or not.
Every city and every state is inexorably marching towards the fate of Detroit, Michigan unless they get their act together. I'd like to point out that Detroit was exclusively ruled by Democrats for forty years... This is a fact not some crackpot theory.
Murphy was an optimist
at how easily everyone tends to accept these types of ideas now. Oregon is really just trying to offset the loss of revenue or, in fact, collect more revenue. It has nothing to do with the environment, fairness, or infrastructure destruction. It is all about money. Initiatives will be concocted ad nauseum until there isn't much money left to pilfer. Then something will happen but I'm not sure what. It will be fairly bad whatever it is. Still, when couched within the guise of a better society or a more fair society, the public seems to get distracted by the left hand while the right hand takes their money.
If the federal government can't manage projects with hundreds of millions of dollars and years of effort (air traffic control, anyone?), who in their right mind would imagine that states (or better yet, counties) could handle the moment-by-moment data that the GPS tracking system would generate.
Why is it that governments /always/ want to be Big Brother?
Clearly, a once-per-year read of the odometer when your car is inspected each year would be enough...except that it wouldn't allow local law enforcement to track our every move.
Though it's doomed to wasting huge sums of money we don't have...it is simply a pork barrel project for anyone interested in starting a tracking business... ...Hey, that gives me an idea! Excuse me...
-Ken
You do have to pass DEQ, however, which is basically the same thing.
Are either plug in hybrids or all electric. Every other car (including traditional hybrids) get's 100% of it's energy out of taxed gasoline.
Oregon has a choice:
A) Tax for road use, and discourage adoption of electrics.
B) Increase the gas tax, and encourage more efficient vehicles.
If Oregon want's to be a "green tech leader" the only option is B. If they want to make drivers of giant SUV's happy, the answer is A. But there is no way that .58% of cars sold in a year are killing the gasoline tax receipts in the state. Overall fuel economy going up, or less driving? Yeah, that might do it.
This would mostly cause the price of shipping by truck to increase, increasing the costs of consumer goods... when I buy a good that has been shipped by truck, I am benefiting from the damage that truck caused to the highway. It's not actually fair to make truckers pay the majority of the cost.
Now which is it: are truckers going to pass 100% of that cost along to consumers, or are truckers going to eat 100% of that cost themselves? Your post is trying to have it both ways.
In reality, you would see something like this: 70% of the cost passed along to consumers, 30% absorbed by the trucking industry in the form of lower profits.
And you don't appear to realize that when you shift the cost of maintaining infrastructure from everybody to those specifically responsible for damaging infrastructure, other consumer costs will decrease by an equal amount.
It's a good thing when the price of a widget reflects the costs imposed on society by the production and shipment of that widget -- such as damage to infrastructure. And if it turns out some damage to infrastructure can be avoided by shipping things by rail, it would give a well-deserved boost to the rail industry.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
The summary loses all credibility when it says " the existing per-gallon gas tax has hit a point of diminishing returns". Gas can be taxed as much as you want. The Oregon gas tax, currently 49.5 cents per gallon, could be raised to $10 per gallon. That's not "diminishing returns," that's a whopping 1920% increase. There's already an infrastructure in place to collect gas taxes. It works smoothly.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
if everybody bought a hybrid today, next year almost no road repairs would get done, because we wouldn't have the tax revenue
Pure fearmongering. If everybody bought a hybrid today, all it would take is a simple adjustment of Oregon's gas tax, from 49.5 cents per gallon to, say, 63 cents per gallon, to raise the same amount of revenue. (Hybrids get 100% of their energy from gasoline. Plug-in hybrids and EVs, which currently have a far smaller market share than hybrids, are a different matter.)
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
If heavy users of the roads shouldn't have to pay more than occasional users, where does it end? Maybe next you'll propose that people who go to the movies once a year should subsidize those who go twice a week, by making the cost the same for everyone.
It's especially a non-issue because it's easier than ever to bill the heavy users -- for example, with EZ-toll plazas that allow people to zip right through at highway speeds.
(And not everyone agrees that education should be free. Compulsory yes, but a case can be made that those who choose to bring kids into the world should own the cost of doing so. That argument was especially attractive when overpopulation seemed like a big threat. Now that birth rates have fallen drastically, not so much.)
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
However, us Oregonians who have been following this push for years know that GPS tracking of every vehicle is overtly part of the plan. This is not inference, this is consistently represented by politicians as being an essential and non-negotiable part of the whole scheme. It's also the reason people hate the idea. If they got rid of the GPS part, almost nobody would really care.
I shudder to think what this newfound love of intrusive government would turn into if the religious right retook the reigns of power. The same power given the government to turn everyone into good little progressives won't suddenly vanish if next the government wants to turn you into good little worshippers.
Yep, the wrong villain. Nobody on the religious right is advocating mandatory attendance at worship services. In fact, it would really suck to have a bunch of people show up at church for no other reason than that the government compelled them to.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
In the region where I live, there is an annual inspection required in Washington, D.C. and Virginia requires them. Maryland only requires an inspection when the vehicle is first registered or on transfer of registration, and the inspection is good for the life of the registration. If the vehicle is never sold, never moves to another state and is eventually junked without ever changing registration, in Maryland - and possibly other states - it will never see another inspection. Also, Virginia does not require re-inspection if the vehicle is not in Virginia. As it turned out my brother-in-law, who lived in Virginia, loaned me his car on a more-or-less permanent basis to use it to commute to work. I drove the car and paid for everything. But I could not buy insurance; I had to have him buy it, list me as an authorized user. And even though the vehicle was operated exclusively in and garaged in Maryland by a person with a Maryland license, where was the car required to registered and the tags issued by? Virginia, of course, where the owner resided.
It's the same rule with corporations. I lived in Virginia and started a corporation for my software company. Later I moved back to Maryland, and I had a choice, I could spend $120 to register a new corporation in Maryland or spend $100 to authorize my existing corporation to do business in Maryland. So I chose the latter. If the corporation is ever sued over its operations in Maryland where its only office and headquarters are located, what law will a state court in Maryland use to determine the corporate affairs of the corporation? Virginia, where the corporation is chartered.
The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
This Bad Idea has been floating around for a few years. Some idiots built a product and have been aggressively lobbying governments to take them up on it, and even though governments really like being able to do big brother tracking of everywhere everybody drives, they still haven't bought it. They've tried selling them to Oregon and California, they've tried selling them to San Francisco for congestion pricing for drivers in the crowded downtown business district, they've tried selling them for highway toll collection, they've tried selling them to the Feds. They've tried selling it to states as revenue enhancement ("People buy Priuses which use less gas, so you're collecting less gas tax, so buy our thing instead of just raising the tax rate!") There's always at least one legislator or bureaucrat who likes the idea and tries to convince their fellow legislators or bureaucrats, which is enough for the pushers to put out a press release.
But because these guys really want to sell their product, the good guys have to keep squashing it. It's usually not hard, because it's a terribly unworkable idea, but the Big Brotherness of it is really obnoxious, and as far as I can tell, wasn't even the purpose of this system.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Just accept that the gas tax isn't a god-given cash cow and either spend less on roads or look elsewhere for money.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning