Forget gas taxes - pay by the mile, This time it is for real.... Options

[Hi_Fi_Guy]

Forget gas taxes; pay by the mile


Oregon to begin testing system that will track miles driven and tax drivers when they fill up.
November 18, 2004: 1:50 PM EST

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - As cars get more fuel-efficient, states counting on gas-tax revenue will feel the pinch. One alternative: tax people based on how many miles they drive, a scheme Oregon will begin testing in 2005.

Here's how Oregon's plan would work, according to James Whitty, an official with the Oregon Department of Transportation who is overseeing the program.

Two devices would be installed in every new car registered in the state: A GPS (for global positioning satellite) device for indicating whether the car is within Oregon's borders, and a second device to count how miles are driven.

The counter would transmit the number of miles driven in Oregon to a receiver on gasoline pumps whenever drivers stop to fill up.

A mileage tax -- instead of a gas tax -- would then be added to the bill.

Oregon plans a test in March or April of 2005 with 20 vehicles registered around the city of Eugene, said Whitty. The state plans to expand the test to 300 vehicles beginning in October or November.

Oregon, said Whitty, depends on gasoline taxes for more than two-thirds of road revenues, which go to contruction and maintenance. While those revenues haven't started declining yet, they will soon as more gas/electric hybrid cars hit the road, Whitty said.

Cars, whether fuel-efficient or not, take up about the same amount of space on roads and cost the state equally in road costs. As a result, said Whitty, they should be taxed the same.

Eventually, Whitty hopes, tracking systems will be factory-installed, more likely if other states adopt similar plans. That is why Whitty is hopeful that California will also institute such a system.

A similar tax idea has been proposed in California, according to several media reports.

[lapuwali]

Just raise the stinking tax on gasoline and skip the  bureaucracy.

I just wonder if this is a real or invented problem. With the popularity of SUVs and the year over year increase in miles driven, I'd think revenues from gas taxes are rising, or at the very least flat. If the gas pump is really a necessary part of the puzzle, then what happens to the all-electrics out there? CARB pushed hard (for all I know, is still pushing hard) for a significant percentage of the cars on the roads to be ZEVs. No way to tax those per-mile with this scheme.

btw, strictly on the privacy issues, if the on-board device transmits ONLY odometer information and simply tacks on the taxes to the price at the pump, there is no privacy issue. They know that some car pulled up to station X at time T, and got G gallons after driving M miles. That's all. The transponder would have to transmit "miles since last fill-up", which presents all kinds of interesting problems with things like driving out of state (where the pumps don't talk to the car). Drive 10 miles in California, pass inot Nevada, drive 500 miles in Nevada with two fillups, then drive 200 miles in CA and fill-up, and it looks like you drove 710 miles since your last fillup, so that one tank gets taxed for those miles driven in Nevada, too. You'd need transponder devices at each border crossing to reset the meter every time you enter California to prevent that problem.

Also, if they allowed older cars to not have the devices, and simply charged them a per-gallon tax (as now) in lieu of the per-mile tax, how many minutes would it be before people with newer fuel-efficient cars obtained a doodad to disable their transponder so they just paid the per-gallon tax? People with older "per-gallon" SUVs would BUY transponders, as the per-mile tax might be cheaper than the per-gallon tax for, say, a Hummer. And fake transponders saying you only drove some random number of miles under 50 each time you pulled up to the pump would no doubt also become available quickly.