Saturday, January 03, 2009
Taxing miles instead of gasoline
Oregon is proposing to tax miles instead of gasoline using a GPS-based monitoring system. Apart from the privacy issues involved -- do we really want the government to know where when we travel at that level of detail? -- this strikes me as a terrible idea. Whether you are worried about global warming or shipping hundreds of billions of dollars to disgusting countries -- and virtually everybody cares about at least one of those two problems -- this would seem to worsen both problems because it reduces the incentive to develop, sell, and buy vehicles that use less gasoline per mile traveled. If the real problem is, as the article suggests, that Oregon is worried about funding the maintenance of roads as gasoline consumption goes down, it can solve the problem by raising an unrelated tax, such as on sales, income, or property. Yes, people who use roads should pay for their maintenance, but everybody uses roads, and those few who do not drive themselves rely on others to do that work for them.
15 Comments:
By 
, at
Sat Jan 03, 01:35:00 AM:
I don't think revenue is the point here. If mere mileage reporting was the point, Oregon could simply require odometer readings during its mandatory vehicle inspections. GPS is hardly necessary. I think the point, as it always is with ideas originating in liberal states, is to make driving a car (which as we all know is evil) as annoying and costly as possible. Hence the proposal to tax daytime miles (no matter where driven, even on uncongested roads) at a higher rate, the cost of the GPS unit itself, and rather odd omission of the fact that electric cars, while not paying gas tax, will pay a boatload in energy excise taxes to offset the loss of gas taxes.
By , at
Sat Jan 03, 02:16:00 AM:
In order to offset the greenness of my solar panels, I leave my Hummer idling in the driveway 24/7, so I'm all for this.
By 
TourPro, at
Sat Jan 03, 07:39:00 AM:
It's not really that hard to block reception and transmission of GPS signals. Also, whenever price "differentials" appears, someone will find a way to hack the system.
No doubt, reprogramming the tracking devices for lower mileage will be de rigeur for anyone who drives for a living.
By JPMcT, at
Sat Jan 03, 08:00:00 AM:
I suspect it won't be long before they blend this proposal with their "Death With Dignity" act and offer mandatory counselling in assisted suicide to anyone with an internal combustion engine.
It's the revenge of the bark-eaters...
By , at
Sat Jan 03, 09:13:00 AM:
I agree it is a bad idea, TH, and it could be just the beginning. I can see GPS tracking as a huge revenue source for Government. Track every vehicle all the time and record the data. If you roll through a stop sign at a deserted intersection, here comes a fine in the mail in two days. Ditto for any other type of traffic infringement. The technology is here to do it now. If you don't have GPS tracking in your car you don't get license plates. If the signal is blocked, the car doesn't start. I hope we never see this come to pass but I wouldn't be surprised if it does.
By , at
Sat Jan 03, 09:17:00 AM:
North Carolina has already tested this. Or another way to say it NC has been wasting scarce resources in order to test this.
By Dawnfire82, at
Sat Jan 03, 10:52:00 AM:
Resurrect horses as a primary means of transportation. I imagine that the Western and Southwestern states have pretty liberal horseback riding laws still on the books...
By TigerHawk, at
Sat Jan 03, 12:23:00 PM:
DF, that would be popular with a certain segment of my family, and certain go some way to amortizing our equine maintenance expenses.
By , at
Sat Jan 03, 01:07:00 PM:
Of course, coupled with congestion pricing, hot lanes, road and bridge tolls, carbon reduction taxation, engine displacement carbon taxes and the ubiquitous gas tax, what harm could come from a little ol' mileage tax.
This level of government tracking and micromanagement in the movement of a free citizenry is justifiable and good because it would produce the correct outcome: more tax revenue and a "voluntary" reduction in the use of fossil fuels.
At least it wouldn't invade the privacy and abridge the freedoms of every citizen - on a daily, or even hourly, basis - as the dastardly Patriot Act does.
By , at
Sat Jan 03, 02:05:00 PM:
P.S.
Washington isn't much better.
Washington wants to reduce mileage.
If you recall, the Governor's CAT recommended reducing the amount motorists drive by 18 percent by 2020, 30 percent by 2035 and 50 percent by 2050.
To look at it another way, motorists drive an average of 31 miles per day. To accomplish the state's new VMT reduction policy through 2035, the state will enforce a series of strategies that force motorists to drive only 22 miles per day, or so goes the explanation in the TIWG report.
By Gary Rosen, at
Sat Jan 03, 02:34:00 PM:
"I suspect it won't be long before they blend this proposal with their "Death With Dignity" act and offer mandatory counselling in assisted suicide to anyone with an internal combustion engine."
Note that when you're sitting in your closed garage with the engine running you are not amassing taxable milage. Painless AND tax-free! Perfect!
By , at
Sat Jan 03, 05:04:00 PM:
Pushing to reduce mileage by 50% is rather counterproductive if you have a mileage tax. The economic benefits of mobility are, of course, irrelevant, and don't forget that the relevant governments haven't said they're replacing the gasoline excise tax with a mileage tax.
By , at
Sat Jan 03, 06:45:00 PM:
This proposal is about 5 years old. Oregonians did what they were asked, they reduced the amount of fuel consumed in the state. Now, the the state needs to recoup the taxes lost to hybrids and other high mileage vehicles. They propose to use GPS so that the tax applies only while driving on Oregon roads.
I don't recall what the plan was for out-of-state vehicles. Probably a 2-tier gas pump system.
Eastern Oregonians hate the proposal. They have to drive long distances to get anywhere.
Oregon and Washington west of the mountains should merge into one state. Eastern Oregon and Washington can merge into another. Each has more in common with it's northern or southern neighbor than they do east and west.
By Viking Kaj, at
Sun Jan 04, 11:13:00 AM:
Between space telescopes focussed on your driveway, cameras on the Garden State, easy pass, credit card receipts, listening devices that pick up your cell supposedly encrypted phone calls, and tower information connection on your cell phone and blackberry use the NSA already knows more about where you are than you do. And, unfortunately, none of this information belongs to you.
If Oregon wants to implant a GPS it's probably only because the Feds aren't sharing.
By Dawnfire82, at
Sun Jan 04, 02:33:00 PM:
Do you really think that the NSA gives a shit about your credit card purchases? Or has enough interest *or* staff to sit and listen to your conversations that their magical super machines gather from their three collections processing locations in United States? (Georgia, Texas, and Hawaii, in case you were wondering)
And do you think that they give enough of a shit to violate the law (both internal regulations and federal law) to spy on you just for the hell of it?
And don't you think that, among all of these people who are supposedly doing this, there aren't any decent, patriotic Americans who might, you know, refuse to spy on regular citizens just for the hell of it?
I remember when it was the red-state country-folk who were the paranoid, conspiratorial fools worried about secret government plots and black CIA helicopters out to get them, and who were mocked for it.
Times change.
