New US Transportation Chief Eyes Taxing Your Mileage

[Kanastrous]

WASHINGTON - Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood says he wants to consider taxing motorists based on how many miles they drive rather than how much gasoline they burn — an idea that has angered drivers in some states where it has been proposed.

Gasoline taxes that for nearly half a century have paid for the federal share of highway and bridge construction can no longer be counted on to raise enough money to keep the nation's transportation system moving, LaHood said in an interview with The Associated Press.

"We should look at the vehicular miles program where people are actually clocked on the number of miles that they traveled," the former Illinois Republican lawmaker said.

Most transportation experts see a vehicle miles traveled tax as a long-term solution, but Congress is being urged to move in that direction now by funding pilot projects.

The idea also is gaining ground in several states. Governors in Idaho and Rhode Island are talking about such programs, and a North Carolina panel suggested in December the state start charging motorists a quarter-cent for every mile as a substitute for the gas tax.

A tentative plan in Massachusetts to use GPS chips in vehicles to charge motorists by the mile has drawn complaints from drivers who say it's an Orwellian intrusion by government into the lives of citizens. Other motorists say it eliminates an incentive to drive more fuel-efficient cars since gas guzzlers will be taxed at the same rate as fuel sippers.

Besides a VMT tax, more tolls for highways and bridges and more government partnerships with business to finance transportation projects are other funding options, LaHood, one of two Republicans in President Barack Obama's Cabinet, said in the interview Thursday.

"What I see this administration doing is this — thinking outside the box on how we fund our infrastructure in America," he said.

LaHood said he firmly opposes raising the federal gasoline tax in the current recession.

The program that funds the federal share of highway projects is part of a surface transportation law that expires Sept. 30. Last fall, Congress made an emergency infusion of $8 billion to make up for a shortfall between gas tax revenues and the amount of money promised to states for their projects. The gap between money raised by the gas tax and the cost of maintaining the nation's highway system and expanding it to accommodate population growth is forecast to continue to widen.

Among the reasons for the gap is a switch to more fuel-efficient cars and a decrease in driving that many transportation experts believe is related to the economic downturn. Electric cars and alternative-fuel vehicles that don't use gasoline are expected to start penetrating the market in greater numbers.

"One of the things I think everyone agrees with around reauthorization of the highway bill is that the highway trust fund is an antiquated system for funding our highways," LaHood said. "It did work to build the interstate system and it was very effective, there's no question about that. But the big question now is, We're into the 21st century and how are we going to take care of our infrastructure needs ... with a highway trust fund that had to be plused up by $8 billion by Congress last year?"

A blue-ribbon national transportation commission is expected to release a report next week recommending a VMT.

The system would require all cars and trucks be equipped with global satellite positioning technology, a transponder, a clock and other equipment to record how many miles a vehicle was driven, whether it was driven on highways or secondary roads, and even whether it was driven during peak traffic periods or off-peak hours.

The device would tally how much tax motorists owed depending upon their road use. Motorists would pay the amount owed when it was downloaded, probably at gas stations at first, but an alternative eventually would be needed.

Rob Atkinson, president of the National Surface Transportation Infrastructure Financing Commission, the agency that is developing future transportation funding options, said moving to a national VMT would take about a decade.

Privacy concerns are based more on perception than any actual risk, Atkinson said. The satellite information would be beamed one way to the car and driving information would be contained within the device on the car, with the amount of the tax due the only information that's downloaded, he said.

The devices also could be programmed to charge higher rates to vehicles that are heavier, like trucks that put more stress on roadways, Atkinson said.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29298315/

[General Zod]

Nice idea, but poor execution. It'd be one thing if they required all new cars to have such a device, but actively requiring people to install it regardless of whether it's a new vehicle or not (from the gist I'm getting)? I'm not comfortable with the idea since it seems to put an additional burden on the average driver who might not be able to afford that.

[Mr Bean]

Kanatrous is there a reason you post without quote tags? Or dress links or do any of the bare minimum work? This is bot quality posting. Not even a little no comment down at the bottom you just copy/pasted the news story and posted the link.

You don't have to any of those things mind you but it is expected.
---------------------------------------
As for the story itself it won't fly, as so rightly pointed out in the news story this is a regressive tax on those who purchased fuel efficient cars or converted their cars to plug in hybrids. My car might use two galleons of gas but I might have driven two hundred miles with a plug-in hybrid.


So this puposal is not only politically foolish, it's economically stupid if they remove the gas tax. Because if I drive my Ford F-350(I don't own one, but if I did) to the store down the road and burn a galleon of gas round trip while my cousin's Hybrid burns zero gas(He's home-converted his Prius to be a plug in), we are both being taxed the same amount.

[Kanastrous]

If quote tags, dressed link and no-comment line are preferred, I'm happy to add them to future linked articles. I don't find that they add much of anything but if that's board-standard I'll certainly comply.

Maybe this is tinfoil-hattiness but the idea of every privately-owned passenger vehicle having its movements tracked and the track files at the government's disposal does not make me particularly happy. Although I know that some folks here are surveillance-society advocates and the idea may appeal to them.

[Count Chocula]

As mentioned in the article, having every motorist's mileage monitored by GPS is just...a...little...creepy, Orwellian, authoritarian, fascistic, controlling and a bad fucking idea. With a bare minimum of hardware changes, like I don't know a Wi-Fi or cellular repeater, it would be theoretically possible for a room full of donut-chewing DOT bureaucrats to keep real-time tabs on anyone they chose. How far from there to automatic speeding tickets, based on GPS readings, hmmm?

Fuck that shit.

[Rahvin]

Gas taxes are one of the best ways government can encourage people to drive more fuel-efficient cars and conserve gas. Switching to a mileage-based system removes the incentive to drive a fuel-efficient car - whether you drive a Prius or a Hummer, you'd pay the same.

And how much would it cost to add GPS chips to all cars and then track them all? Wouldn't it be cheaper to build several more toll locations and simply charge a toll to use more of the highway system?

Raise the gas tax significantly and start adding more toll locations. Discourage wasteful driving, but don't give up the incentives we have to encourage fuel-efficient vehicles.

[General Zod]

How far from there to automatic speeding tickets, based on GPS readings, hmmm?

I just wanted to nitpick this point, but I take it you're completely unaware of speed-trap cameras that automatically take pictures of your license plate and send you a ticket in the mail? Criticizing something based on "zomg automatic tickets" is absurd.

[Phantasee]

This would murder the trucking industry. The same industry that is just getting over the high diesel prices of the last couple years.

[Kanastrous]

Although it does bring up an interesting question re: speeding tickets, as Chocula mentioned.

If you really *are* speeding, on what grounds would you complain about getting caught and fined via GPS, versus getting caught and fined by an individual officer noticing your speed and pulling you over? If you agree that speeding should be discouraged and that fines are the way to do it, what matter if you get nailed by a cop on the spot, or by an automatic system that monitors everybody?

I suppose you could argue that the automated system could produce false positives for speeding, but then so do individual police officers, on a pretty routine basis (and a popular attempted defense of a speeding charge is to question the reliability of the hardware used to establish your speed, already).

Seems to me that arguing against GPS and in favor of officer-issued speeding tickets might be based in part upon a sort of 'catch-me-if-you-can' sense that it's 'fairer' if the cops have to work to nail you once every so often, as opposed to having an automated system with a much better chance of doing it consistently.

[Kanastrous]

How far from there to automatic speeding tickets, based on GPS readings, hmmm?

I just wanted to nitpick this point, but I take it you're completely unaware of speed-trap cameras that automatically take pictures of your license plate and send you a ticket in the mail? Criticizing something based on "zomg automatic tickets" is absurd.

I'm aware of the devices that do that at traffic signals; I hadn't heard that such systems are in use for speed-limit-enforcement, too.

Behind the times, I am.

[General Zod]

I'm aware of the devices that do that at traffic signals; I hadn't heard that such systems are in use for speed-limit-enforcement, too.

. . .why else would they put the cameras in there in the first place? It's common knowledge, really. And I don't even drive anymore.

[Kanastrous]

The cameras along southern CA freeways aren't for speed enforcement per se, they're there to monitor overall traffic flow and road conditions; they don't track or photograph specific vehicles out of the traffic stream and they don't have any speed-measuring capability. Now, if someone monitoring the feed notices what they take for a speeding car and chooses to notify CHP, that's different from the type of monitoring/photographing equipment found at intersections. The freeway cameras don't do the measure-your-speed/photograph your car/send you a ticket thing.

[Stuart Mackey]

As mentioned in the article, having every motorist's mileage monitored by GPS is just...a...little...creepy, Orwellian, authoritarian, fascistic, controlling and a bad fucking idea. With a bare minimum of hardware changes, like I don't know a Wi-Fi or cellular repeater, it would be theoretically possible for a room full of donut-chewing DOT bureaucrats to keep real-time tabs on anyone they chose. How far from there to automatic speeding tickets, based on GPS readings, hmmm?

Fuck that shit.

You don't need GPS to do it. NZ has mileage charges on diesel vehicles and this does not require GPS, all you do is 'buy mileage' when one's initial mileage has run out. The amount bought, and when, is recorded on a sticker on the windscreen for enforcement purposes.

[Akhlut]

My main problem with this is that cars that use more gas tend to be bigger, heavier machines which do more damage to the roads. Potholes aren't made and exacerbated nearly as much by Ford Escorts as by Ford F-350s.

[General Zod]

You don't need GPS to do it. NZ has mileage charges on diesel vehicles and this does not require GPS, all you do is 'buy mileage' when one's initial mileage has run out. The amount bought, and when, is recorded on a sticker on the windscreen for enforcement purposes.

How big of a percentage do diesel vehicles make up of NZ's driver population though? I just don't see it being terribly enforceable when we're talking millions of cars without some sort of automated system. (Ignoring the terrible implementation aspect, for the moment).

[Alferd Packer]

I think solutions like this can be ascribed to the brainbug that "equal" means "fair" in all circumstances. Like a flat tax, this presumes that all vehicles are equal--they consume the equal amount of resources in construction, they consume the same amount of fuel in opertation, and they strain the infrastructure upon which they're driven equally. As was pointed out by others, all these assumptions are false.

For these problems, however, this solution would pressure everyone to drive less, which is desirable for many reasons that have been discussed repeatedly here. I don't think, though, that this outweighs the obvious disadvantages of treating all vehicles the same.

Perhaps an alternative would be to add some sort of modifier to the calculation of miles driven, based on the type of vehicles. A run-of-the-mill sedan would have a multiplier of 1, so its owner would be taxed exactly the number of miles driver. The owners of Hummers and Escalades, based on the mileage and weight of the vehicle, would have a multiplier greater than 1 used, so unless they drive less than the sedan owner, they pay more. Naturally, hybrid and compact/subcompact owners would get a multiplier less than 1, so they would be charged less for their miles driven. In this way, you could retain the effect of a gasoline tax...but then again, why not just keep the gasoline tax?

[Ekiqa]

This is just a silly and very difficult way of raising money for roads.

Either increase gas taxes to pay for road repair and construction, or put tolls on roads. That way, the road can be self-sustaining, and can pay for everything it needs.

[frogcurry]

I assume that this is intended as a defensive measure, to establish a constant stream of revenue from motorists which won't be affected badly by future reduction in gasoline and diesel usage.

The idea of funding road management for electric vehicles by taxing gasoline vehicles (which is what is in danger of occuring) would be madness. The resulting acceleration of transfer from oil to electric driven cars once they became cost competitive would break the US electric supply and force national electric prices up massively. This idea - although sucky in implementation - would avoid that issue. Of course, they should just accept the loss of the tax revenue and make it up in fairer revenue streams elsewhere, such as VAT.

[Jade Falcon]

There has been talks the last few years of trying this in the UK, through the installation of GPS devices in your car which of course, you the driver, would pay for the privilege of getting installed. I have to agree with Count Chocula on the creepiness of it, not because of speeding concerns as I count myself as a careful driver and not someone who speeds. I just find the idea of being tracked, even when doing nothing wrong a bit creepy.

Not to mention, that sometimes when proposed some people have said that there would be a reduction in the fuel duty or the Road Tax AKA Vehicle Excise Duty to compensate, but I know that wouldn't happen.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Why not raise the gas tax? We need to get people off the roads, and this will be just as destructive to the economy as raising the gas tax; I don't see how anyone could convince themselves otherwise.

[Jade Falcon]

Why not raise the gas tax? We need to get people off the roads, and this will be just as destructive to the economy as raising the gas tax; I don't see how anyone could convince themselves otherwise.

Well I can't speak for the US side, but in the UK we already have high fuel tax, along with the Road Tax, so having this in addition to them would be a bit much. As for myself, my annual mileage is about 4000 miles max so its not as if I'm personally making a huge impact.

[General Zod]

Well I can't speak for the US side, but in the UK we already have high fuel tax, along with the Road Tax, so having this in addition to them would be a bit much. As for myself, my annual mileage is about 4000 miles max so its not as if I'm personally making a huge impact.

Taxes aren't about individual impact, they're about collective impact. (I also believe Duchess was talking about just increasing the gas tax, not increasing it in addition to this insane idea of taxing mileage).

[Questor]

I've got a question on milage tax.

If I drive my car on errands for my employer, who pays the milage tax? Will it be rolled into my milage rates, or will I have to pay it myself?

[Kanastrous]

Probably depends upon the particular deal you have with your employer.

[Questor]

Well, my employer bases its reimburment rates on the IRS rates, so I guess I'm asking if the deduction rates will take this into account.