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Oregon Testing Pay-Per-Mile Driving Fee To Replace Gas Tax
schwit1 tips news that Oregon will become the first U.S. state to test a program to replace their gas tax with a fee for each mile citizens drive on public roads. The 5,000 people voluntarily participating in the test will be charged 1.5 cents per mile. Revenue from gas tax has been on the decline as vehicles get more fuel efficient and as hybrids and electric cars become more popular. This measure is an attempt to raise the amount of money the state takes in to pay for infrastructure projects. Many owners of those hybrid and electric vehicles are upset, saying it specifically targets them and discourages environmentally-friendly transportation. Others point out that those who drive electric vehicles need the roads maintained just as much as people still driving gas-powered cars.
Why not just tolls? That's a per-mileage solution that doesn't penalize hybrid and electric owners.
The tax burden shifts from low MPG vehicles to high MPG vehicles. Sounds like an environmentally friendly idea to me...
Lower mpg vehicles often tend to be heavier (e.g. trucks & SUVs) which one assumes causes more wear than a lighter vehicle.
with the aim of knowing your where abouts at all times. If you don't want a gas tax, charge a weight based fee at registration. And if you really, really must have a milage based tax, do it at the annual inspection based on total miles over the prior year. Accept that there is no perfect solution but that putting monitors inside people's cars is about as offensively bad as it gets.
Currently, Oregon has a $0.30 per gallon fuel tax. Plus conversion factors for unusual fuels.
This $0.015/mile tax is equivalent, therefore, to the rate you'd be paying if your car got 20 mpg.
So the volunteers will come out ahead if they have gas-guzzlers, and way behind if they have even reasonably fuel efficient vehicles.
And in exchange for higher taxes on driving, they get the privilege of providing Oregon information on how much they travel and WHERE THEY TRAVEL.
What could possibly go wrong with this idea?
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
My dad is a retired materials science engineer; a road with infinite life for a car, will have a lifetime of something like 10 years for a fully loaded semi... They are the problem, not the cars. Tax the semis much more for the damage done to the road, vs mile driven.
"Private vendors will provide drivers with small digital devices to track miles"
There are already pretty strict laws for tampering with odometers. Why aren't they a sufficient measure?
Road wear is often estimated as the fourth power of axle weight. So I imagine the final regulation will include road wear as a factor. Incidentally, this rule of thumb is sometimes cited as why cyclists aren't taxed. A 200 pound* bicycle causes one ten-thousandth of the wear that a 2000 pound car causes, which means cyclists' contribution to road wear would likely be too small to collect.
* Occupied weight
And this idea of where someone has driven being collected by government concerns no one? That's the impression you would get from the bang-up job done by the journalist authoring the article.
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
How do any volunteers who drive gas or hybrids get out of the paying gas tax, since they're paying the mileage tax? It's added right into the pump, yeah?
Maybe through a form on their state tax return that refunds the pump taxes?
I'd assume they save the receipts and receive a refund, like you do with income taxes.
The gas tax works. It's hard to evade and benefits from existing taxing infrastructure. The only problem is that it was never indexed for inflation. Tell me why we need a completely new system? Are people really less resistant to this than paying a few more cents a gallon at the pump?
Electric vehicles and hybrids can't be the reason. Electric vehicles still represent a tiny portion of vehicles on the road. Hybrids don't really get much better fuel economy than the tiny econoboxes of the 90s. People still drive big trucks everywhere. Since less fuel efficient vehicles also tend to be heavier, they cause a disproportionate amount of road damage (and effectively get taxed more per mile).
It needs to be a forumula that is based on miles driven AND weight of the car... unless Oregon actually believes that a Civic and a Big Rig cause the same amount of long term damage to a road.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
They should have registration based on vehicle wieght, and other factors which determine how much wear your vehicle does to the road.
...you didn't REALLY think that by driving your electric or hybrid car that you were going to permanently somehow avoid the government's rapacious tax-addiction, did you?
It's just like the cigarette taxes or any of the 'sin' taxes: they've worked so hard to get people to stop smoking, they are suddenly realizing they're losing revenue.
There's no question that we need to pay taxes for the roads we drive on.
Formerly, the connection between general road use and gasoline was irrefutable; now they need another mechanism.
-Styopa
... would be to have your car registered out of state so you don't pay the mileage tax, but buy gas in Oregon (where it's cheaper due to no tax). At least until the neighboring states follow this same policy.
Hint: those ruts aren't caused by studded tires, they're primarily caused by poor road design and big freaking trucks.
Besides which, modern studded tires are increasingly designed to reduce noise and road damage. New Nokians, for example, have studs that retract into the tire when driven on dry asphalt, and they're testing a future design with studs that can be electrically retracted and extended.
There is plenty of money from gas taxes to maintain the roads. The problem is, the highway "trust" (LOL) fund is used as a personal savings account by politicians for their pet projects. Things like millions of dollars spent on bike trails and other assorted earmarks that have nothing to do with road maintenance.
That depends on 1. signal sets that can detect bicycles rather than leaving them at a dead red,
They need to rewrite the law to allow bikers to treat stop signs and yields, and to treat stop lights as stop signs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I...
Of course that doesn't work at a busy intersection where the bike cannot safely cross without a green light, but it's a good start to making biking more efficient for bikers.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
Does it stop when you drive out of Oregon?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
My state legislators actually asked this question and got me thinking about a one time tax on tires. It has the benefits of the gas tax (anonymous, based on usage) but the added benefit that you can approximate the weight that a tire will carry on the road.
During a purchase you could either pay all taxes up front and be done with it or set up a monthly billing cycle so that poor can still make ends meet without dreading lost tread. Once taxes have been paid you are done and do not have to pay that tax until your next tire purchase. If a tire is expected to last 100k miles it, it is estimated to carry X weight for Y length of time (miles driven) meaning Z dollars in maintenance. Tax = Z - any other road infrastructure income/subsidies (gas tax still in effect could subsidized the tire tax making it cheaper).
This could also help spur better usage of tires (keeping them properly inflated [increasing MPG], rotating tires, etc). I am not sure how to handle used tires. Also, this doesn't help if you have to travel on dirt roads or poor roads that wear on tires more than pristine new black top.
Just a random thought, I haven't gave it much thought after initially discussing it with legislators.