Please Read & Discuss

[hvw]

Some states are considering taxing mileage rather than gasoline, mostly because road maintenance is paid for by fuel taxes, because fuel-efficient and hybrid vehicles threaten the maintenance budget.

Tell me your thoughts?

Comments

[wand_r]

Well, it does the job of taxing the folks who are most using the resource (the roads) and (in theory) encouraging less driving. However, at this point I can't imagine that the quantity of fuel efficient vehicles out there is large enough to be causing a huge decrease in revenue fuel tax revenue. My guess is that lower revenues are due to lessened driving by folks who are watching their spending. Taxing mileage will not do much of anything to encourage folks to drive more and in areas without sufficient mass transit options will provide an added hardship to an already over-extended consumer.

I don't like the argument that a mileage tax will eliminate the monetary incentives for buying fuel efficient vehicles... Clearly having the fuel tax didn't encourage fuel efficiency when gas itself was cheap, since the fuel tax is fixed and per gallon, as opposed to the sales tax (a percentage of your total sale). Gas prices go up, and folks are going to continue to want fuel efficient vehicles to offset this.

Eh, basically it's a wash. We have to fix the roads and we have to pay for those fixes. I'd really rather (whilst I'm dreaming) folks be more adamant about improving mass transit options, but this America and they'll pry our cars from our cold dead hands, I suppose...

[hvw]

What I find interesting about this is that it's a replacement.... the usual thing would just be to add an additional tax layer on somehow.

Here, for instance, fuel is taxed, and a portion of local/income tax revenues go to street maintenance. On top of that, anyone who wants to travel on the major highways (super-slab, interstate, etc) pays for a tax sticker for the vehicle. There are month or year stickers, and that money goes to pay for highway maintenance, as part of the national budget. Rental cars, people coming from other countries, freight trucks, everyone pays this tax.

Given the size of this nation (Kentucky-ish) that's certainly more manageable than it would be in the US, unless the US were divided into travel tax regions. For example, I can believe the people who live in VA/MD/DC are likely to drive in all three places over the course of a year, and they are almost without exception going to take the freeway to do it.

Of course, enforcement is an issue...

Americans are not adamant about improving mass transit because mass transit in most parts of the country carries a serious stigma. Last week I was a bit startled to see a woman on the bus here wearing a fur coat; it was a clear reminder that public transit here isn't because you suck too much to have a car-- it's available because driving isn't unconditionally preferred.

[wand_r]

I think we're getting all chicken/egg here... Mass transit carries a stigma, in most parts of the country (read, sub-urban parts or cities to which the following applies) because mass transit SUCKS in most parts of this country. So, the only folks who will use a seriously flawed service are the ones who can't afford to do otherwise (or are hardcore enough in their belief system to do it out of spite). And there are entire regions with no mass transit options at all, they have no choice.

I agree, a lot of the issues are ones of scale and enforcement. I would also want to see some codification of where the revenues from these taxes are going. Infrastructure has to be maintained... the money for it won't come out of thin air... but I wouldn't want this to turn into another random revenue stream that can be used for any pet project that occurs to someone. And I'd really like the revenues collected for an area go to supporting that area. Getting into the local politics of Northern VA some; I'm pretty tired of the tax revenues from this area paying for improvements in S.VA while our traffic gets worse and worse and worse.