Posted on 06/12/2007 8:58:57 PM PDT by antiRepublicrat
Vegetable oil sticks him with $1,000 fine
Bob Teixeira decided it was time to take a stand against U.S. dependence on foreign oil.
So last fall the Charlotte musician and guitar instructor spent $1,200 to convert his 1981 diesel Mercedes to run on vegetable oil. He bought soybean oil in 5-gallon jugs at Costco, spending about 30 percent more than diesel would cost.
His reward, from a state that heavily promotes alternative fuels: a $1,000 fine last month for not paying motor fuel taxes. He has been told to expect another $1,000 fine from the federal government.
To legally use veggie oil, state officials told him, he would have to first post a $2,500 bond.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsobserver.com ...
Considering that the govenment should be encouraging people to pursue alternatives like this it dumb.
In fairness, I do want to point out that the tax, although levied on fuel is really a road usage tax. The guy does still use the road so it’s not as stupid as it sounds at first. But still pretty stupid.
Beaurocrats in Raleigh “gone wild” someone should make a video!
>>> They’d tax breathing if they could find a way to enforce it. <<<
Don’t speek to soon
Supreme Court’s global warming ruling decried as ‘politically correct’ Jim Brown
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1813678/posts
>>>> The Supreme Court has ruled that carbon dioxide and other « greenhouse gases » are air pollutants <<<<
A long time back on some of the gun ownership & voteing threads In jest I made the coment that there was going to be “felony breathing” laws.
Gee ESP?
The States collect the Federal tax (and the state tax) and send the Fed money to Washington. A little portion of it dribbles back to the state from which it is collected, the rest is stolen by politicians for their own use.
Here in California, there is a 7%-plus tax on each gallon of gas sold. These days that is a billion dollar figure. Does it go for the roads? Nope, it goes into the general fund. Funding things like fetal stem cell research (10 billion there) and other liberal thingies. One of the first things our Governor Kennedy did was fund that debacle.
Not to mention bridges, railroads and buses (mass transit) and...yea...bicycle trails!
>>> double the gas mileage of everyones cars the government would reward us with doubling the the gas tax <<<
They already are.
E-tracking, coming to a DMV near you [DOT wants to track your car wherever it goes]
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1546825/posts
>>> So far, Washington state and Oregon have received fat federal checks to figure out how to levy these “mileage-based road user fees.” <<<
I checked it out. I think they’re nuts.lol!! Seriously, if there truly was a shortage on oil, I would be for alternative fuels. I just don’t believe we are best served by burning foods in our vehicles.
If a lot of people did what the guy in the article did, go to Costco and buy vegetable oil for auto fuel, it would drive up the cost and create shortages of vegetable oil.
This is the kind of thing that makes it insane for people to try to force us to think that Matthew 17, 22 and Romans 13 is telling sovereign American citizens to pay any taxes the government tells us to pay. Our submission over the years without taking our head out of the sand, and letting government go to this extreme is one reason this man is going through this.
The sovereign citizens of the United States are collectively “CEASAR” under our Constitution, not the federal government.
Wonder how much they would have charged me for ‘evaded’ motor fuel taxes, way back when I was driving old, oil burning clunkers that barely got 100 miles/quart?
Every where I went, I made sure I had a case of cheap 50wt in the trunk.
12,000 miles/100/year = 120 quarts/4 = 30 gallons of oil * ~.$40/gallon tax =$12.50/year I “cheated” California out of some 35 years ago.
Hope the Statute of Limitations has run out!
I want to see Bicycles licensed and taxed. In my state, we pay multiplied millions of $$$ for bicycle trails and bicycle lanes, but the bicyclists won't use them. They ride in traffic and tie up traffic something fierce. They ignore stop signs and rules of the road and expect you to give them the right of way or you get the middle finger salute. I want a nice big license plate on each of them so we can tell who the offenders are. Right now, they're all anonymous. Motorists are paying for their special lanes and trails, and they ride free. T'ain't fair!
I shall join you in that salute.
250 million more Americans should as well.
I agree. If you use something you should help pay for it.
Good point...I find myself conflicted over this. He's doing his best to conserve and find alternative energy sources...good for him. At the same time, he is now using the public roads that all other motorists pay a toll (gas tax) to drive on for free.
I'll need to go ponder this further.
P.S.: I scored a 27.
I really don’t have much sympathy for this guy. He knew he was evading a tax and still using the roads the tax was designed to support.
Road taxes based on fuel usage has always been a poor method of allocating costs, and as alternative fuels become more widespread it will only become more inequitable. The solution should not be to try to devise new taxes to target all the possible fuels people could use to power a vehicle.
We should take the philosophy that roads are just infrastructure and benefit everyone in an area, so they should be paid for from the general fund. Even a mileage-measuring tax would not really allocate the cost of road maintenance accurately. Trucks and buses do much more damage to roads than passenger vehicles, yet their mileage is not an accurate measure. Including the vehicle weight as a factor would get closer, but still not accurate by any stretch of the imagination. Bicycles put very little wear and tear on roads but bike paths and lanes are disproportionately expensive to construct compared to the person-miles ridden over them.
People that never drive still benefit from the goods and services that roads allow, yet must pay through some convoluted function of the price on the good or service.
Why not jsut call it all infrastructure and pay for it through the sales tax or property tax, instead of trying to do it through “use” taxes that bear no relationship to the costs of that use ?
I do. He is a victim of contrary government policies and laws. The government tries to promote efficiency while it has laws and tax structures in place to prevent it. The left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing and it is the citizens who always pay in the end.
It is a perfect example of why I want government out of our lives and business as much as possible.
The bastards don’t care if you pollute. They just want your money.
How the hell did they find out? Did he go around advertising?
Well, maybe he is due some sympathy for being a ping-pong ball. (Heck, I was ready to pardon Paris Hilton over the weekend because she’d become a caught in a power struggle between the judge and sherrif.)
Can we agree that social engineering is a bad thing and that doing it through the tax systems rather than through incentives is even worse ?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.