milage tax...

> 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.

So... they are saying a +6,000 pound SUV with nobby tires does the same amount of wear to the road as a 3,000 pound hybrid with regular tires. That's a bunch of political bull.

Distance alone is not enough to determine tax properly.

 

It also fails to take into account the social costs of pollution.

And gas stations will hate it, because it will require them to install the hardware in every pump, plus collect, track, and pass along the tax, which will be much more complicated when it's no longer a fixed amount per gallon.

My proposal: using the known mpg and emissions of the vehicle, and estimating the expected lifetime of the vehicle in miles, calculate the lifetime pollution, estimate the cost to society of that pollution, and tack it on as a tax at the time of original purchase.

Separate, additional taxes could be based on wear and tear to the roads, based on vehicle weight & expected lifetime miles; and on the cost of building new roads to alleviate congestion, based on the amount of space occupied by the vehicle & lifetime miles.

If they're going to install detectors in the vehicle, there could be an additional "underutilization" tax at the pump, assessed on large vehicles with too few passengers.

 

One more reason to keep an old diesel in the fleet. WVO is free, and can be had from the back of any fat food joint.

 

Appropriate typo.

 

It was no typo. :mrgreen: