Mileage tax: "a logical complement for fuel taxes"
Top lawmaker wants mileage-based tax on vehicles
Excerpt:
A House committee chairman said Tuesday that he wants Congress to enact a mileage-based tax on cars and trucks to pay for highway programs now rather than wait years to test the idea.
Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., said he believes the technology exists to implement a mileage tax. He said he sees no point in waiting years for the results of pilot programs since such a tax system is inevitable as federal gasoline tax revenues decline.
"Why do we need a pilot program? Why don't we just phase it in?" said Oberstar, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee chairman. Oberstar is drafting a six-year transportation bill to fund highway and transit programs that is expected to total around a half trillion dollars.
A congressionally mandated commission on transportation financing alternatives recommended switching to a vehicle-miles traveled tax, but estimated it would take a decade to put a national system in place.
"I think it can be done in far less than that, maybe two years," Oberstar said at a House hearing. He was responding to testimony by Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., who recommended that the transportation bill include pilot programs in every state to test the viability of a mileage-based tax.
Blumenauer said public acceptance, not technology, is the main obstacle to a mileage-based tax.
Pilot programs "would be able to increase public awareness and comfort and it would hasten the day we could make the transition," Blumenauer said.
Oberstar shrugged off that concern.
"I'm at a point of impatience with more studies," Oberstar said. He suggested that Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., chairman of the highways and transit subcommittee, set up a meeting of transportation experts and members of Congress to figure out how it could be done.
The tax would entail equipping vehicles with GPS technology to determine how many miles a car has been driven and whether on interstate highways or secondary roads. The devices would also calculate the amount of tax owed.
"At this point there are a lot of things that are under consideration and there is also a strong need to find revenue," Oberstar spokesman Jim Berard said. "A vehicle miles-traveled tax is a logical complement, and perhaps a future replacement, for fuel taxes."
Comment: Catch that last sentence: "a logical complement, and perhaps a future replacement, for fuel taxes". Taxes 101 ... once the government starts collecting them they won't stop. It would be in addition to gas taxes.
More from the article below:
A mileage-based tax has been unpopular in some states where it has been proposed. Critics say it unfairly penalizes drivers who live in rural areas and intrudes on privacy
Final comments: Democrats are just cooking up one new tax idea after another!
One would think that even liberals would catch on to the fact that the gas tax corresponds far better to societal costs than mileage, but I guess not. One might also guess that even a liberal could figure out that the gas tax does a great job of providing decent incentives (efficiency, living near work, etc..), but the mileage tax, not so much.
ReplyDelete58 million Obama voters. 57 million living neurons in their heads, apparently.
And how would the government pay to install all these units? How would they even enforce it?
ReplyDeleteIt reminds me of a movie called the fifth element. One of the main characters, Bruce Willis, was a taxi cab drive. They had these devices that made sure they never broke the speed limit and would automatically suspend their license and shut the car off if they broke the law too much. He ended up shooting it after he broke like multiple laws in a row and shut his car off.
Or the movie Minority Report where they were able to shut his car down automatically also.
Or a Doctor Who episode where aliens were able to take control of the cars and they killed a number of people because they found out things they weren't supposed to.
haha. Well, I suppose the government isn't going that far, but who knows what the future has. Actually, I wonder if this can be a step towards not having cops police the streets. They could have all the roads mapped out with speed limits, and the GPS unit would be able to tell if they sped.
You start thinking of this: GPS in every car ... sending data to the government ... a giant database ... run by bureaucrats ... scary
ReplyDeleteYour new comment reminds me of a different movie, "The Island". Great movie that presented a different ethical issue than this. But the facility the people were in logged everything from dreams to human waste. And if anything was off you were called in to discuss it.
ReplyDelete