Taxing drivers by the mile and not by the gallon

The Christian Science Monitor ^ | Tuesday, October 5, 2010 | Monitor's Editorial Board

[RipSawyer]

His goal is to be able to say that he never met a tax he didn’t HIKE!

[RipSawyer]

His goal is to be able to say that he never met a tax he didn’t HIKE!

[Drill Thrawl]

200 working days. I don’t drive to work or even go to work on Sat, Sun, holidays, etc...

[highlander_UW]

Just another Obama tax scheme to harm the poor. The poor can't normally afford homes close to many places of work, so they have to buy further out and trade their commute time for the higher standard of living. But the Obama admin hates the poor...they need them to remain poor so that they can more easily be manipulated...so of course they would come up with a plan that will harm the poor and those who live in rural communities at a higher rate.

[beelzepug]

Bob had an erection lasting more than four hours and failed to call his doctor. Alas, poor Bob.

[GeronL]

lol

[stevie_d_64]

You are so getting a noogie for that one!!!

As soon as you get better, and I can run away a bit faster...hehehe

You got trains on tha brain muh man...Pittsburgh has trains right???

[Carry_Okie]

Nobody cares what a self-promoting fraud like you thinks

Yeah, right. I'm sure you get compliments like this all the time here on FR.

Time will tell with the new book, but I wouldn't be making bets against its veracity. Serious people have started to notice.

[longtermmemmory]

Tax mobility.

hmmm..

just like obama proping up property “values” to keep property taxes higher.

[Kellis91789]

The point is that a 4,000 lbs electric vehicle pays no gas tax but puts just as much wear and tear on the roads as a 4,000 lbs F250.

It is not unreasonable to base road use fees on weight + mileage. In the past, the gas tax worked as a fair approximation, but with hybrids and all-electric vehicles that buy little or no gas, the existing fuel taxes don’t work anymore. The fuel taxes are effectively another subsidy for high-mileage vehicles at the expense of similar weight low mileage vehicles. Some relatively light sports cars are paying as much in fuel taxes as that F350 toying a boat trailer because their mpg sucks.

[Kellis91789]

Doing it the way the article talks about with GPS calculating how far you’ve driven and paying periodically, yes it would be intrusive. But why do it that way ? Why not simply pay with your annual car registration renewal ? When you get the renewal bill, all it needs to know is the current mileage of the vehicle. With that and the VIN, it would be easy to calculate a true “wear and tear” fee based on the vehicle weight and the miles traveled in the previous year. Nobody needs to know where you’ve been, just how many miles you drove.