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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.
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
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
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.
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
The last one is the one I care about.
When did we stop counting the cost of government intrusion into our daily lives? When did people stop dismissing that sort of thing as flatly unacceptable? Is our need to try to force our neighbors to live the way we think in right so strong?
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.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
1979 Landcruiser.
Have gnu, will travel.
I remember in my state, when they advertised that the "new" seatbelt laws would not be primary reason for pulling a motorist over, they could only ticket you for not wearing a seatbelt IF they pulled you over for something else, and noticed you didn't have one on.
I think most people see the recent "Click-it-or-Ticket" ads on tv where they definitely say they'll pull you over if they see you not wearing a seatbelt.
Whether you agree with this (I wear my seatbelt)...this is a quick example of saying one thing to worn a law in with the public, and then soon expanding and changing it to allow more intrusion into your life.
Hell, these days the RICO act is being used in new imaginative ways not pictured when it was passed...and that's an old well known law structure.
I can surely see this tracking that is supposedly anonymous now....to be expanded (maybe with help of the Bluetooth article yesterday) to be used for real time tracking, I mean, would that be useful during an Amber Alert???
Golly gee...remember that both child abuse and terrorism are the new keys to the Constitution, and surely we'd be willing to trade a little more privacy for the sake of the children being abducted by terrorists, wouldn't we?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Or they could just do like almost every other state in the Union and just PASS A SALES TAX. This is an example of the kind of shit that happens when you don't have an equitable and sane tax system and put too many eggs in one basket. By relying way too much on the gas tax instead of a more balanced approach, Oregon fucked itself. They encouraged people to use less gas alright (a good thing), but now they have to come up with crazy shit like this law to replace it.
Either cut costs or pass a small sales tax, assholes. Slapping some weird device on everyone's car is NOT the sane approach to the problem.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
Yeah, because the (D) would NEVER expand upon (R) ideas of bigger more intrusive government at all (or visa-versa) ..../sarcasm.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
I'm willing to wager that if they tried that tack, the smug little hippies who suggested this little tracking device would quickly want it shut down.
I don't think it's the smug little hippies that are pushing for this -- they are already driving high MPG hybrids or Electric vehicles and enjoy making the gas guzzlers pay higher taxes.
As a smug hippie, I'd rather see gas taxes rise proportional to the average MPG of cars on the road. The higher the average MPG, the higher the gas tax, keeping revenue constant, and making low mileage cars less and less attractive. A weight based tax can be added to car registrations so EV and Hybrid owners aren't off the hook for road maintenance costs. Gasoline powered vehicles aren't going away for decades so maybe in 15 years they'll have to look at a mileage based tax again (and if self-driving cars become commonplace. they can self-report their mileage).
Since when is it the "religious right" that wants to track people...in OREGON. I was recently told (on Slashdot) that even religious people in Oregon are careful not to identify themselves as religious. I can assure you that if this is coming from Oregon, it's more likely to come from Greenpeacers.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
"...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.
Or they could just do like almost every other state in the Union and just PASS A SALES TAX.
I'm sure the more impoverished among us out here would really appreciate your suggestion. I'm doubly certain that all the stores in Portland (esp. those which sell large items, such as furniture) would appreciate seeing a huge drop in business from Washington State shoppers.
But, you know, unintended consequences and all that.
Incidentally, income and property taxes out here more than makes up for the lack of sales tax.
Now your cutting costs idea? I like that.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
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...
That's because they don't know how to pump their own gas... :)
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
2 words: electric cars
Oregon has a $5000 tax credit for electric cars. It is ridiculous to both subsidize and tax the same thing. Instead of trying to tax electric cars, they could just eliminate or reduce the subsidy.
or they *could* just have you report the miles driven via your ODOMETER and call it done.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Or when they pass a law saying you have to put one in.
Cool, already have one. It's called an ODOMETER :)
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
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."
Remember: Sales taxes are regressive
No one is complaining about the taxes. They are complaining about changing the law in a way that could easily lead into tracking the movements of individuals. Perhaps, you see the Slashdot Libertarians as simple-minded because you don't understand what they are saying.
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"
Actually, if you are working off the premise that gasoline taxes go towards maintenance of the roads, to offset the damage caused by those vehicles, then there should be no taxes on gasoline.
Leaving aside issues of axle weight and the wear on the road infrastructure, every time I take my car in for its smog check, the mileage is recorded along with the VIN and engine number. That happens every other year, and averaging that distance across the interval since the last smog check would give an average miles per day, which produces an annual miles-driven value for a per-mile tax without any ability to track the location of the vehicle. And for the inevitable 'but this doesn't account for the car being driven out of state' objections, neither does the proposed mileage meters; you can't tell where the car is being driven without being able to track where the car is. And this data is already being collected; there is no additional recordkeeping involved.
the gas tax is going away as cars get more efficient. Yes yes, raise the tax you say and you can make it up. What about non-gas cars? Used to be so niche a segment as to not matter but very quickly it's going to be a significant portion. Plan ahead and make it a 'use' tax (and frankly I had use taxes, terribly regressive). Maybe have a minimum free usage of say 20k miles; tax anything over that. The gas tax is nothing but a crude tax on miles driven coupled by vehicle weight. Big vehicles usually get lower mileage and do more damage...hence they pay a higher tax than a motorcycle which gets 10x the mileage of a semi. The odometer combined with vehicle registration is all we need to accomplish this. No privacy implications at all.
Every time I bring up the "Use the odometer" statement, I get a rash of comments saying "That doesn't properly account for the edge case".
There are many non-intrusive ways to tax. Unless you actually like totalitarianism (and many people do these days), you'd pick the least intrusive way to provide the taxes to pay for the roads (which, frankly, are mostly paid for by the federal government giving money to the states).
Your knee-jerk totalitarian-friendly response actually scares me. Are you really so emotionally invested in giving the government ever more power to track us that you'd fight back against a less intrusive way to pay? Or did you just not think it through?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Why? Does the milage-based tax somehow imply the tax on the fuel itself would go down?
Don't bet on it. The only thing the government is less likely let go of once they have it in their hands, than power, is money.
Remember that Spanish-American war (1898) telephone tax? They held onto that for over 100 years.
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?
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!
Private roads. You know what? the gas tax still applies to those too. So no difference.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Suppose you, as a government, perceive a need to tax something car-related. From almost any point of view (environmental, privacy, overhead cost, administrative complexity,...), the logical thing to do would be to tax the fuel (or increase that tax). Any point of view but that of the oil industry, that is. This makes the argument pretty compelling that behind closed doors, those in charge in Oregon probably wanted an increased fuel tax, only to see it commuted (pun not intended) to a milage tax under pressure from the oil lobby.
In any other country, such would be labeled "corruption". It's easy to have one of the lower corruption rates in the world if you redefine the term...
What's your point? You're already paying the gas tax for those miles now. No difference.
If a vehicle is not used on public roads, the gas is not required to be taxed. Farm vehicles and vehicles used on private roads can buy special purple gas that is not taxed. If you are caught using purple gas on a public road, you can expect to pay some severe penalties.
You know you can set those to any value you like right, with a set of tweezers? And there are always new gauge clusters to be had at the auto wreckers.
If the government did that with me, id simply have two gauge clusters and swap them out (takes maybe 20 minutes) every time before I had to go in for my evaluation.
Its already against the law to tamper with odometers if the intent is to defraud. Its also very easy to detect.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Yes we do have the power to change the system. Voting is not going to get that done, though. The only way to make any real change is through education of the general populace as to *what* the problems are. That's hard to do, but as you said, just because it's hard doesn't mean we shouldn't try. People get the government they deserve and right now, we deserve this government, sad to say.
Btw, nice sig.
. . .
Don't bet on it. The only thing the government is less likely let go of once they have it in their hands, than power, is money.
. . .
Let's be very clear on this: Money IS Power.
This is not a figure of speech. Exactly what is money? You can define it by what it looks like and what we use it for but that dances around the simple truth:
Money is numerical denomination of power. If I have two simoleons I can convince someone to give me twice as much of something then if I have just offer just one. That "something" may be physical goods, time, or labor.
Money is a physical representation of power.
You're not paying by the mile.
Yes, it just so happens that the more miles you drive, the more fuel you consume
So, yes you are paying by the mile. With the added benefit that big vehicles pay more because they do more damage to the road. So not only are you paying by the mile 'now', it's also adjusting for vehicle size and weight.
Odometer + type of vehicle covers that exactly.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Why is it that people get this Pollyanna idea that a meaningful percentage of government spending goes to actually accomplishing meaningful expenditures such as, "building and maintaining roads and bridges"?
... ...] ... ...]
The vast, vast, VAST majority of spending goes to administration. Most of that "administration" is used to administrate other administrators. The quantity of money that is used to accomplish ANYTHING by a government entity is nothing short of astounding.
A simple roadwork example: A public works engineer explained to me the cost of converting a simple 90 degree intersection of two 2-lane roads, from Stop signs to a traffic light. The bill for the studies, planning, engineering, purchasing, and installation?
[... wait for it
Total cost was $250,000
[... wait for it
in 1990 dollars.
People complain that schools don't have enough money. Bull! School districts get plenty of money but the quantity of administration has grown to the point where the majority of money goes to support the disproportionately large percentage of "administrators" who of course, because they are in positions of power, command higher salaries. And at the same time they don't actually educate a single child.
Think I'm exaggerating? Download the 2011-2012 report: http://www.cde.ca.gov/ds/fd/ec/currentexpense.asp
Column "F" is the dollars that are spent annually per student. The statewide calculation works out to $8382 (cell F962). Figure a small average class size of 20 children and that works out to $167640. For that kind of money don't you think you could hire a well paid teacher, get a great building, fill the classroom with new books each year, buy cheap desks every few years, have a part time assistant, pay the electric bill, and in the end make one hell of a profit? Then to add to it, instead of just doing one room of 20 kids, do 20 rooms of 20 kids. If you couldn't siphon off an astounding quantity of money while vastly improving the service you aren't trying.
Well an astounding quantity of money IS being siphoned off by extraneous administration (which describes most of government). And it isn't providing anything to justify the burden to the taxpayer.
In reality class sizes are more like 30+ children ($251460) so we are really being bilked. BTW - This isn't hard to see if you are looking. I haven't been studying this or working in the industry. I found and calculated ALL of these numbers while I was writing this post so it isn't hard to figure out and see that we are being used.
There's an immediate problem with simply recording the mileage and charging a flat 1.5 cents per mile.
For starters, Oregon's major metropolitan area crosses a state line. Unless Washington State enacts a similar tax, you're going to have a situation where people buy gas in Oregon (which will have cheaper fuel as a result of not charging per gallon) and being registered in Washington (therefore not paying the per mile tax). Or, you'll have people who are Oregon residents who purchase fuel in Washington paying a per gallon tax AND a per mile tax EVEN FOR MILES THEY DRIVE IN WASHINGTON. There's a similar problem for people who live on the eastern edge of Oregon with Boise's western suburbs and Ontario, Oregon.
How do you make the system equitable for Oregon drivers who drive a significant amount of miles in neighboring states without some kind of GPS tracking?
You missed the point about the example of seatbelts. It wasn't about the belts..but how they sold the law.
Originally, you could not be pulled over for simply not wearing a belt, they sold it that way.
Not long after, they changed the laws, so that merely not wearing a seatbelt..allowed them to pull you over.
A simple example of how they start a law in a limited way to pass it...then quickly expand the law to catch more people and more disparate behaviors.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........