Or in other words, we’ll all drive “taxis”, except for the chosen exempt few.
Obama admin. floats draft plan to tax cars by the mile: ‘A vehicle miles traveled tax could be tracked by installing electronic equipment on each car to determine how many miles were driven’
…
The plan is a part of the administration’s Transportation Opportunities Act, an undated draft of which was obtained this week by Transportation Weekly.
It is so spectacularly stupid, I kept waiting for it to show up on snopes.com yesterday. I just couldn’t believe it to be something under consideration. At 500 pages, the idea is one of many in the proposed bill.
Today at 10:15AM EST, the story was updated, and now the White House says this:
“This is not an administration proposal,” White House spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki said. “This is not a bill supported by the administration. This was an early working draft proposal that was never formally circulated within the administration, does not taken into account the advice of the president’s senior advisers, economic team or Cabinet officials, and does not represent the views of the president.”
Translation:
…we are shelving the idea until after the 2012 election.
The plan was to put GPS devices on cars that would report the mileage. The Hill writes:
Among other things, CBO suggested that a vehicle miles traveled (VMT) tax could be tracked by installing electronic equipment on each car to determine how many miles were driven; payment could take place electronically at filling stations.
I could see a huge black market for “patches and hacks” and other circumventions developing out of this. It would turn millions of people into criminals.
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“We are already taxed for every drop of gasoline we buy”
Noooo. We’re paying it at about 9.9 USD/gallon, and going straigth up. Way to go.
As a GPS engineer I can tell you a GPS makes a lousy odometer even in clear sky. Forget about inner city driving or on bridges or tunnels.
They mention collecting the data. How? GSM? So that means the feds can call your GPS and check on your mileage. Great if it’s once a year. But who says it will be. Perhaps they would like to call you now and find out where you are. Hmmmm….
Now lets save lat, lon and velocity. Log all this and when you get your data checked, feel free to line up for any speeding tickets. A GPS is very good at measuring velocity. Heck, lets move the system along and have the GPS call the feds anytime you are speeding on an interstate. (they would know the speed limit by knowing your lat and lon.)
And to help get this program, let’s institute a federal based car inspection program. No reason to have all the variations in each of the states. Nothing like uniform regulations across the country. Bureaucrats love one size fits all thinking. Fits better in their little pin heads. Certainly need the same toilet bowl in Louisiana as in Arizona.
Pay by the Mile is an idea that Washington State is considering.
http://dvice.com/archives/2011/03/feds-consider-m.php
A fully loaded semi weighs 80,000 lbs in the US (most jursdictions). Max axle weights are 20,000lbs per axle. A semi gets 6 – 8 mpg US.
In the UK you pay a “Road Tax” based on the size of your engine and the supposed “emmissions’ – ironically based on data from the 1960s and 70s (The Civil Servants are too damned incompetent to know they are being fed lies on this by their Greenpeace “Advisors.”). On top of that there is the fuel tax, currently around 4/5ths of the pump price which is £1.50 per litre (4.5 litres = 1 Imperial Gallon/ 3.6 litres = 1 US Gallon). The tax is quite a complex calculation, but starts with Excise Duty levied on “landing” of the Crude, then a further tax on “product” and finally a tax at the pump – then add 20% Value Added Tax … The retailer actually gets to keep around £0.02p per litre sold, the oil company keeps around £0.38p and the rest goes to the Treasury.
There are proposals, introduced by Blair’s Liebor Party, to change this system and make us pay a “Toll” to use the Motorways which would have been based on a rate per mile. As far as I know these are still on the table, despite the ejection of the anti-car, anti-freedom and anti-personal choice thugs of Liebor from power.
And let us not forget the city dwelling “greens” who think everyone has access to a bus or tube train every five minutes and can cycle anywhere they want to go. This sort of tax, and I suspect a large part of the anti-carbon dioxide support we see in various political circles is more about controlling the individuals mobility than saving the planet. Most of them want to keep the public where they are so they have control over your travel options, schools, universities, job opportunities and so on …
It used to be called the Feudal System, but Stalin and his merry men modernised it and proved it worked very well in the former USSR as it still does in China and North Korea.
No extra taxes are needed for electric vehicles, just drop the subsidies. The increased costs will move those “green” folks back to the gas guzzling SUVs they previously drove. Those who drive electric, aren’t likely to get farther than 40 to 100 miles before they turn back, so it’s not likely they’ll be paying more than about $12 a day anyway (200 * $0.06/mile).
From here you can see married couples’ miles estimate premium, the rich peoples miles estimate premium, the smokers and drinkers miles premium, the soda pop drinkers miles premium, the unregulated wood stove user miles premium, the gun owner miles premium, and the alternative minimum miles tax. That should keep them busy in DC for a few more years. way to go, not!
This is a classical political tax! Tax you individually so no one else will know but you how much you pay in taxes! Hide the tax! Politicians are afraid to raise the gas tax in public so they try something stealthy!
And people think I’m weird because I don’t want OnStar. I’ve been expressing just this concern ever since that system came out.
Will they require us to buy GM vehicles, too?
Time to get my old 6 VOLT car off the blocks…
Then again all the ethanol additives has melted all the old fuel system gaskets.
More wasting of my time to collect taxes on myself to pay the government.
Then again when Obama care places a tracker in my head, all changes in location will be taxed.
In Europe they call it Road Pricing and they can’t make it work or sell it to the public.
OH xxxx, this is another of these “technology looking for a problem to solve”, whereby some greedy manufacturer with a technology tries to persuade stupid politicians that the world’s problems will be solved when they start using their wonderful technology.
To see this is just utter carp, ask yourself why they don’t just tax petrol/gas? Why do you have to add complex equipment that is bound to break down and/or lead to a whole crime industry bypassing it, when you could simply tax petrol/gas? The answer is that this has nothing to do with reducing miles, and everything to do with selling a useless technology that no one wants.
Northern California Bureaucrat says:
May 6, 2011 at 11:17 am
Keep those ideas bottled up in your little part of the world. The rest of us prefer not to think like typical Kalifornians do. I lived there for a while and became an angry angry person in less than a year. Any idea that comes from that state about taxes is wrong. How I know that is that the idea never involves reducing or eliminating a tax. Always increasing or creating a new one. We don’t have a federal govt. income problem. We have a fed govt spending problem. It’s time to stop the feds from spending so we can keep some of our own money. NO MORE TAXES of any kind implemented in any way. Got it???
Ray say’s, “So, if they tax on miles and remove the existing gasoline/diesel taxes,”
Guess what Ray. I don’t think there is any discussion of removing any existing taxes. The Government wants MORE money not less.
In the USA, gasoline is already taxed. Diesel fuel is already taxed. Electricity is already taxed. Therefore, gasoline, diesel, and electric vehicles are already taxed per mile. Heavy vehicles use more energy per mile, therefore road weight is already taxed. Inefficient vehicles use more energy, therefore inefficiency is already taxed.
I don’t know anyone stupid enough to believe that this proposal is about fairly taxing road use. That mechanism is already in place. This is about tracking vehicles, for which there is no legitimate justification.
“I think we should tax all people who stand in water. … Ooooooh!”
numbers i read say big trucks do 95% of the damage to roads….
I am not against new taxes. I already pay for tolls on autoroutes and it varies by time and distance. What you want in a tax is that is easy to collect, and it not put to high a burden on any part the community The poor should not pay more than they can reasonly cope with, and the rich neither as they just go elsewhere. It could be a milage tax, but unless it is congestion related a petrol tax seems just more environmently friendly and better accepted.
The problem is not the government getting the money, it is what they do with afterwards. You could lower the national debt. You could fight the a war against those blow up buses or the twin towers. You could even improve the roads. However if they see it as “new money” I suspect they will spend it on some silly projects to save the plante.
I totally predicted at another blog that they would want GPS units in every car. Then they happen to have everybody’s movements also. Instead of just stopping someone and downloading their iPhone, they could also download you GPS records and see exactly how many times you were speeding. Oh, they would know that already and simply send you a bill in the mail or electronically debit your account as you speed.
Welcome to Big Brother 1984 2.0 2011
This has nothing to do with taxes. This has to do with knowing more about us. And more potential for control.
wow, my 2 comments should have been moderated off the forum…not sure what happened.
It won’t be long before everyone is chipped and a heart beat tax is levied. You could go on then to levy a bathroom/toilet tax and of course a chewing tax. Maybe later a thinking tax. For global warming a breathing tax (CO2) and a wind tax (methane gas).
Hey, the Dems are secretly rejoicing over the gas prices. After all, it is a part of the Agenda that they voted for.
“……Mr. Chu has called for gradually ramping up gasoline taxes over 15 years ……”Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe,” Mr. Chu,…(now the Democrat Secretary of Energy) said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal in September.”
Wall Street Journal, December 12, 2008
So, in September of 2008, the man that would become the current Secretary of Energy was laying out the Democrat Agenda. That was some two months before the election. The information was available and if you didn’t know that before you voted, then shame on you. And if you DID know but didn’t vote, then I don’t want to hear your whining.
Do you remember in the 2006 election when Ms. Pelosi said we should elect the Dems because “we have a plan” for gas prices? Only you had to elect them to find out what it was. For four years, they were in control of Congress (2007 thru 2010) and now you know what their plan is. We are now half way to their goal.
Too bad about the economy, though.
But then you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.
Besides, there would be plenty of money for HIGHWAYS, if the Dems didn’t throw our gas tax money away by building Toonerville Trolleys to nowhere. The pathetic fools in Austin just spent over $100,000,000 on light rail. And they used the existing rail lines instead of having to buy right-of-way and laying track. All that money and all they got was a slow trolley to Leander that nobody rides. But, it’s cool. Do you remember when the bridge collapsed in Minneapolis-Saint Paul? They had transportation funds available to maintain those bridges, but instead they built a really cool trolley that nobody rides. People died when the bridge collapsed but they have really cool light rail. Cool. You see, in liberal areas there is no glory (or votes) in maintaining roads or bridges. But there are votes in light rail or bike paths. And then when people die because of how the politicians have misspent the tax money, they just blame George Bush. And voters believe them.
Too bad about the dead people, though.
But then you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.
Regards,
Steamboat Jack (Jon Jewett’s evil twin)
So Big Brother wants to track your every move in your vehicle. Sounds totally innocent.
Tax on tires?
As posted above we already do. For trucks it is called a ton mile tax, Cars also are indirectly taxed via both their gasoline taxes (heavier cars all things being equal get lower fuel mileage), and Colorado (not sure about all states) your license auto registration fees are determined by age and title weight of the car. In addition since tire sizes are proportional to vehicle weight taxes on tires also provide a vehicle weight pro-rated tax. Bigger heavier car = bigger tires.
Truck damage to roadways also has a lot to do with construction standards for the roadways. It has only been recently that testing has confirmed the trip hammer effect of heavy vehicles as the loaded axles bounce after hitting a pot hole or other bump. Smoothness of the roadway, and strength of the road bed can largely eliminate road damage if adequate pavement depth is used. Thin understrength roads pound out quickly but thicker stronger pavements with adequate base fill, do not.
Larry
Although the privacy issue is huge, there is quite a bit of logic to this proposal to tax by the mile. We currently finance road and bridge construction through gasoline taxes. Even though an old 15-mpg car may not cause any more need for roads than a new 35-mpg car, the old car is paying more than twice for the roads as the new car. Now consider electric vehicles — or other alternative energy cars. They are not paying gasoline taxes and therefore are avoiding their share of road costs.