Posted on 05/07/2014 9:48:35 PM PDT by lowbridge
Sick of the gas tax?
What about a tax on every mile you drive?
A new bill going through Sacramento would tax drivers for every mile they are on the road.
The state gasoline tax of 52.9 cents per gallon could be replaced with a "miles driven fee" of $0.05 cents or so per mile driven, under state legislation proposed by a Bay Area lawmaker.
State transit officials note that there's not nearly enough money available to fix the many bridges and roads in California that are in desperate need of repair.
A federal highway fund, based on taxes on fuel, is expected to run dry this summer.
We've got to figure out how to pay for infrastructure, state Sen. Mark DeSaulnier (D-Concord) said. One philosophy is, if you use it, you should pay for it.
Under SB 1077, introduced by DeSaulnier, a still-to-be-determined California city would begin taxing motorists in January 2016. The longer your commute, the more you would pay.
That may yet be a tough sell, but a $0.05 per mile fee could raise over $100 billion for roads in some parts of the state, the San Gabriel Valley Tribune reported.
(Excerpt) Read more at nbclosangeles.com ...
People are gonna start turning their odometers back ...
As I get older, I wonder how people keep falling for this tactic. They will take away the tax and charge by the mile, and then, when they need more money, they will bring back the gas tax but keep the per mile fee.
Yawn.
CC
>> there’s not nearly enough money available
There will never be enough money for corrupt states and municipalities.
CC
Thought you could save money with a more fuel efficient vehicle? Gotcha!
Somebody has to pay for all those Mexicans.
They tried this in Germany a while back...trying to tax freight haulers transiting Germany...spent multimillion's of Euros on software and satellite hardware for tracking....all wasted.
I didn’t bother reading the article. Did someone really say they would only charge for mileage and not have the gas tax as well? I can’t imagine anyone admitting to stopping a tax, especially a democrat. How many hybrids in CA using less fuel per mile than normal vehicles? or total electric cars using no fuel? This idea is but one solution, I’ve heard others with more merit, like turning over most of the Federal gas tax to block grants to the States for maintenance. The Fed’s keeping enough to maintain the Interstate System.
If it’s 5 cents per mile, then you start getting screwed if you’re doing better than 52.9/5 = 10.5 MPG.
If I drive 24 miles in a 24 MPG car, that’s one gallon. That’s 52.9 cents of gas tax currently, or 24 x 5c = $1.20 in the proposed tax, for a car that is not very special at all.
Could this be right? A 40-MPG car, and there are plenty of them on the road, would pay $2.00 in tax for every gallon of gas instead of 52.9 cents?
The higher your MPG, the more you are screwed, it looks like. So much for trying to save a buck on gas and giving the environment a break.
Well, fourth sentence in and I failed the reading test.
So the liberals have finally figured out how to move all the peons out of the country side and into the Utopia of liberal controlled cities.
Those match at a mileage of 10.58 mpg. Since very few people have cars or trucks that are that bad, "replaced" actually means "hugely increased". My car gets about 25 mpg, so that would be the same as a gas tax of $1.25 per gallon, assuming that the gas tax is removed entirely. Being Kookifornia, I wouldn't bet on that.
Here is the problem. Cars are getting better mileage and thus paying less total tax. The tax at the pump is mostly used to repair roads.
As mileage continue to increase and as electric car use continues to expand, the situation gets worse.
The question is what do you propose as an alternative to the tax on miles driven?
At the federal level it is a bit different situation. However, there is movement towards the miles driven tax federally also.
At the federal level, complaints over the miles driven tax are justified because the new system undoes a very efficient tax system.
The federal excise tax is collected at the refinery and is about 98 percent efficient in tax collection. Meaning it does not take much administrative effort to collect.
The miles driven tax on the other hand costs about 25% of every tax dollar collected for administration. It is a complicated matter to track and tax all the cars vs collecting at the refinery.
So why would an efficient tax be traded for one that so inefficient. The answer is because no member of congress is willing to go on record raising the excise tax on gasoline.
The reason they are afraid to do that is because voters would get made at them. So along comes the complicated and wasteful method that does not require their vote.
Better for them, when they see you at rallies and meet-and-greets they can get your favor by saying they are against the federal miles driven tax and blame the Administration.
they spend it on mass transit and bike trails and eco projects
They can talk about this, but if they actually try and implement it, it will blow up in their faces.
Even the California LIV will wake up if you try to stick it to them directly. They don’t care as long as someone else is paying the bill, but stick it to them at your own peril.
Who said, You deserve the government you have, Alex?”
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