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’
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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.
“…..no family making less than $250,000.00 a year will see any form of tax increase…..”
~Barrack Obama, September 12, 2008
on video
“…..So let me be absolutely clear: if you are a family making less than $250,000.00 a year (pause, point, look at camera)….. if you are a family making less than $250,000.00 a year you will not see your taxes go up….. not your capital gains tax, not your payroll tax, not your income tax, no taxes. Your taxes will not go up.”
~Barrack Obama, July 30, 2008
Mark T says:
May 6, 2011 at 12:51 pm
Huge Constituional issue. You buy a car, you own it.
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Ummm, no you don’t. The State owns it. All you have is the Title.
For those concerned with the “chip”: All cars made in the last 25 or so years have a computer that tracks speed, exhaust gas composition, crank and cam position, and a multitude of other “sensory” info. Many of those cars have keyless entry systems that are a receiving station for data transmitted from your keyfob. Newer cars have GPS, bluetooth, wifi, zigbee and other systems like ONStar. So they have the capability to transmit and receive data such as location, average speed, etc. Most of these systems have the capability of giving up the data on command from a handheld scanning device available to the police.
REALLY!!??
OBD or, more specifically OBD-II much?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On-board_diagnostics
BTW, a better choice than the word ‘track’ could have been made in that sentence; measure, time, gauge, supervise or sense would have been far better choices … since a variety of environmental and engine parameters are measured and used to calculate (by digital computer) control inputs to the engine for operation parameters e.g. fuel injection duration (or pulse width), spark timing (advance or retard), transmission shift points et al for the purposes of ’emissions control’.
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Here in New Zealand we have had distance taxes for non-petrol-propeled vehicles for many years. Initially brought in for trucks above 2.5 T as a means of making them pay real costs for the road maintenance load that they caused, and all heavy vehicles [ being diesel fuelled ], have to have an approved hub odometer fitted and purchase distances in advance. { This includes heavy trailers for the 18-wheelers }.Light diesel vehicles can use their OEM odometers. All must display the sticker that shows the distance at which their tax expires. Seems to work well, and no expensive electronic tracking required. Diesel fuel is tax-free at the pump, which allows Farmers , boaties, etc to avoid the administrative load of claiming back for non-road useage.
I’ll post this anonymously from NZ – I normally use my real id – but for this post I’ll just use a nom de plume. I keep two speedo-heads here for my diesel trucks. Since we have to pay for fuel at the pumps which includes some but not all taxes and then pay at the post office to buy what is called Road User Charges (RUC), I prefer to maximise my investment in tax. So one speedo head on the truck shows a value that is legal, whilst I have another in bits being “adjusted” so it can be reinstalled as needed. It’s amazing how much fuel I go through with so few miles!!!! Works for me – but – pssst – don’t let on
Anonymous from Godzone
@ur momisugly Michael Schaefer and others – this just in from Pierre Gosselin:
“State Government Takes Over Management Of Mercedes And Porsche.” Apparently a Green initiative to force manufacturers of large luxury cars to consider the environment. A comment from the source is as follows:
“The incoming Green-led state government of Baden-Württemberg has unveiled plans to introduce a speed limit on the autobahns and replace vehicle tax with road tolls. The road tax should apply to all roads, he said, and should be, ‘as individualised as possible, thus related to time, place, length of road use and type of car.’ This should reduce traffic in total, he said.”
http://notrickszone.com/2011/05/08/german-state-government-takes-over-management-of-mercedes-and-porsche-will-also-industrialise-black-forest-landscape/
High-level planning docs like this seldom reach down into the minutia (details) on how mileage-based user fees would actually be metered for miles/km driven, but, it would be safe to say that any such system would have certain desirable features that monitor or note tampering, akin to means to prevent or detect turned-back miles (distance) such as on an odometer tampering … it would then be safe to say that a GPS-capable device fitted to the car or truck and requiring no more than +12V vehicle power would be one contemporary means by a vehicle’s mileage/distance driven (on particular roads even!) is not far fetched. In fact, if differentiation for different routes driven (say, state highways vs interstates) _then_ a GPS-position based ‘recorder’ is about the only answer to meet that requirement (logging of routes via Lat/Long coordinates and later determination of various taken for tax computation purposes say).
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Re: Adam Ness on May 6, 2011 at 3:30 pm and his prior post, did you, Adam, by chance see this section:
Bolding mine …
The docuemnt: http://thehill.com/images/stories/blogs/flooraction/Jan2011/draftdot.pdf
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Mods, if you pls, a do-over for formatting upgrade … thanks.
Re: Adam Ness on May 6, 2011 at 3:30 pm and his prior post, did you, Adam, by chance see this section:
Bolding mine …
The document: http://thehill.com/images/stories/blogs/flooraction/Jan2011/draftdot.pdf
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That would be double taxation. Tax is already in the price of gas. Increased mileage means increased taxes. This is not about tax, it’s about control of your life and the way you live. Why would the President of the ‘free’ world have friends like 60s radical Bill Ayres, communist Van Jones, union thugs Andy Stern & Richard Trumka? Time for people in the USA to take a stand and vote out Obama and his communist and socialist cronies.
‘A vehicle miles traveled tax could be tracked by installing electronic equipment on each car to determine how many miles were driven’
Because using the odometer already in every vehicle wouldn’t cost enough.
Using GPS to track mileage??? There used to be some kind of web award for the dumbest use of expensive, high-tech “solutions” that replaced low-tech solutions that work better and cost less. This would definitely be a contender.
I know this is an old post, but relevant to the discussion:
NHTSA is considering requiring ‘black box’ recorders in all new cars.
http://www.torquenews.com/1062/nhtsa-considering-mandating-black-box-recorders-all-cars
google/bing “mandatory black box installation on all cars” under “news” for more