Mileage tax proposed for state's drivers

If they can put a chip in your car like that, with how computer-controlled cars are today, they could link the chip into your computers controls and link that into a GPS system with the speed limits integrated and keep your car from exceeding the limit in any given zone.

It's all maddeningly Big Brotherish.

This country is one based around liberty and trust...not safety and strict rules, but all systems must stagnate and crumble.

 

A vehicle’s wear and tear on a road is proportional to the weight of the vehicle. A Hummer is rightfully paying more per mile in tax because of its low MPG - which is mainly attributed to its weight. Going to a miles driven formula would effectively lower the tax on the Hummer and raise it on a Prii. Instead, states should use a formula based on the overall average fuel efficiency of all vehicles in the state. Raising the gas tax yearly and in line with the average overall fuel efficiency would result in the state receiving the same amount of tax money year after year - rewarding fuel efficiency, and penalizing gas guzzlers.

I can not imagine any Air Resources District agreeing with a miles driven formula.

 

i agree... what about semi's and large 4 by pickups with off road tires??

there is a thousand what if's and lets face it. the state is looking for the easy way out. they obviously are much more willing to fight Toyota and the small (but growing!!) hybrid community then taking on the oil companies with their multi billion dollar legal fund.

it is just like the oil companies to find some chickensh** way of fighting back when they know we have a better idea. they have been doing it for years and dont even think that just because the legistration came from the dept of transportation that i dont know where the idea really came from.

 

I'd use a formula something like this:

$ Constant x Miles driven x vehicle Weight x Emission Factor

or:

C x M x W x EF

Heck, heavier vehicles are harder on the roads, and those with high exhaust emissions are harder on the environment. Those vehicles should pay more because they cost us all more in one way or the other.

 

The whole thing is nonsense. If they're getting less fuel tax money in because vehicles are, say, on average 10% more efficient, all they need to do to recover the revnue is raise their tax take on fuel by 10%.

Why spend so much time and effort on complicating things?

 

BNG4DBK - a billion dollars.

KMO - That is exactly what I said . . . except you said it more efficiently . . . less internet tax for you!

 

It could end up with the "Gas Meter" person coming around weekly to check odometers so bills can be sent.

I love these 'fair' taxes, the ones that hit everybody. Unless you already write off all your expenses for gas as business expenses, like I expect everyone who already ducks the other taxes does...

 

I like Ken Cooper’s formula. I’ve always felt that car taxes should be more in tune with how much affect the car has on society. Thus, including the weight and emissions as part of the calculation seems cool.

So I was thinking about how to operationalize a system that is based upon Ken’s formula. How’s this:
Every year you would get your car inspected like you already do in almost every state in the USA. At the inspection, your weight and emissions and maybe MPG would be calculated and this data would be plugged into a bar code that would go into your sticker. What would NOT go into that bar code was who you are or where you live. No personal data at all. Also, the kind of car would be in that bar code.

Then when you go to get gas, you could only get gas if you had a bar code for the pump to read. There would need maybe to be system to override this for lets say when you get gas for your lawn mower. Your tax would be determined by some formula that would be based upon the calculations from your last inspection.

This would assure everyone’s freedom to drive the heaviest and most foul polluting vehicle there is. In fact, it could even have an expired inspection and still be allowed to drive. But the calculation of the tax that you would be charged would take all that into account. As an example, you could drive a 10,000 pound behemoth that gets 2 mpg and adds 2 pounds of pollution per mile to the air and has a 3 year expired inspection sticker, but you would have to pay a $25 dollar per gallon tax. Or you could buy a 2000 pound gas sipper that has zero pollution and pay 25 cents per gallon tax.


So how do you assure that people don’t get fake stickers? This one is easy. You also give the police “readers†so when they pull you over, they can read the sticker and if the sticker says the car weighs 2000 pounds and is a Prius Hybrid, the cop can simply use his eyes to see it is not. Then confiscate the car right then and there with horrendous fees to reclaim it.

Again, freedom and choice are maintained, but with that freedom and choice will be accountability and consequence. You can drive what you want, destroy highways with your weight and the air we breath and worsen our dependence on dangerous reliance on foreign oil, but you will pay through the nose for that freedom.

Of course, different formulas would need to be made for businesses and industry. Note I said different formulas and not “exempt†from the formulas.

 

. . . wait a second. . .
$100 per GPS system? Someone would have to drive 100,000 miles at .1 cents per mile to reach $100. Plus the added costs of the system to monitor vehicles, gather data, and collect the taxes (and more work for already backlogged tax collectors).

Basically what I'm saying is: wouldn't it be easier just to put a $100 tax on new cars? (according to AAA, an average user owns a car 5 years and 75,000 miles).

 

impreza - Apparently you have not heard the saying “Keep it Simple, Stupid.â€

How would cars visiting or passing through your state buy gas?

Maybe we could also have laser beams on an interstate check the air pressure of every car that drives past and add a penalty to the formula if your tires are not within two PSI of each other or the recommended pressure. Of course this system would also have to have a camera record the license plate and another take a picture of the car for cross reference purposes . . . because, after all, air pressure has much to do with mileage and resultant air pollution as other parts of the formula. Rube Goldberg would be proud!

Sun__Tzu - That would be a regressive tax on pollution. You want to tax the old car for polluting, not tax the new car for the pollution it is not producing. You want the new car to be less expensive to operate and the old polluting car to be more expensive to operate . . . planned obsolescence for polluting cars!

 

bar codes for gas

Sufferin' Prius Envy You're right about out-of-staters. I'll work on that one.

However, I'm not sure my point conflicts with "keeping it simple". The bar code idea would all be built into a computer and so would be simple. Plugging that into a printer so special stickers get made is also pretty simple. Right now a bunch of forms get printed at my local inspection station when I go for an emmisons check. Some of those forms already have a bar code on it.

Plus, cops already have computers and on the back of my drivers license is a bar code, so the cops probably already have scanners or will soon.

The only probelm is to add a scanner at the pump. Seeing as how almost every small store in the USA has a scanner at the cash register, and probably up to 90% of the gas stations where I live have credit card readers at the pump for "pay at the pump", I'm not so sure that it would be all that difficult to put some kind of scanner on the pump.

And as for "overides", for out of staters, it would probably simply mean that when an out of stater came through your station, they would be forced to go into the store to pay for their gas and not pay at the pump. You could make them bring in their registration so the vehicle data could be calculated from it and then they could be issued a temporary bar code that would be based upon an "average" emmision for that type of vehicle.
This temporary could be for 30 days of something and after the first visit, they could then "pay at the pump".

Or something similar.

Supermarkets and banks have gone very far with bar codes and computers and stuff. Why can't gas stations and state governments?

I'll always remember the day when I got money from my local Rhode Island bank from an ATM in Paris France. Yet a few weeks later I read about a murderer who was pulled over in one state in the USA but was let go because they had no way to know that the person was wanted in another state. It was pitiful how far ahead we were with banking and how far behind we were with criminal justice.

 

omg!!

are we overcomplicating this or what!!!

all this has come about for what reason?? that is the real question... is it the loss of highway revenue from hybrids using less gas and therefore being taxed less?? or is this a result of some other issue??

how about the issue of the runaway popularity of hybrid vehicles and the oil companies and big 3 watching their cash cow moving to the pasture across the road to graze.

the cost to implement such a system would far outweigh the loss fo revenue from hybrid vehicles for the next 10 years. get my drift?>

this aint about how to assess and distribute taxation, its about BIG BUSINESS continuing to dictate how we live by making hybrids unattractive in any way that they can. unfortunately (for them, great for us) the old arguments of
"its too slow"
"its too inconveinent"
"it doesnt have the range"
"it simply doesnt work as well"

dont work any more. so they have to find another avenue of attack.

its my belief that if the supply had been available, that the Prius would have been in the top 5 for best selling passenger sedan OF ANY KIND!! and i think the big 3 feels the same way.

this legislation is so uncharacteristic of CA its unreal. here they are penalizing high mileage, low poluting cars. what has brought this complete 360º turnabout?

well that answer is obvious. same reason that makes anyone go against what they believe in... MONEY

California legistators... you are pathetic... thanks for the sellout... just dont spread your ideas to Washington State.

 

Um, maybe not. I'm pretty sure that if you put a Prius on top of a Hummer, there would still be plenty of metal showing Interesting that "The Humminator" proposes changing the tax structure for his personal gain. Owners of gas guzzlers already complain that they pay an unfair portion of the highway taxes because they use more gas. I guess they don't recognize that they also put an unfair portion of the wear and tear on it. IF they decide to do some "miles driven" tax, I like Ken Cooper's calculation as it takes into account all the factors.

And, what happens if this is the one thing that causes people to car pool like crazy? They'll have to change it all over again because they won't be getting enough tax money.

 

Re: bar codes for gas

How would you stop forged out-of-state registrations from being used? You don’t actually expect the schmuck behind the counter at the busy quicky gas mart to confirm that the Hummer at pump #18 really isn’t an out-of-state Prii ~ do ya? License plate scan? FINE! A forged magnetic license plate to go along with the forged papers.

ALSO

How would you stop someone from transferring gas from one car to another? For instance, if I owned a Prius and a Hummer (please shoot me if I ever do) . . . I would take the Prii to buy the cheap gas and then transfer it to the Hummer. Or better yet, have my wife drive the Hummer up to the gas pump using the other lane, fill up the Prii . . . then fill up the Hummer - all on the Prii’s bar code.

Solve these problems and you may come up with a system that would make Rube Goldberg blush in embarrassment that he did not think of your system. . . He is dead you know. But his legacy can live on!

Make it foolproof and they will make a better fool.

 

YOU THINK WE DON\'T KNOW THAT ???

This is the type of doofs we have under the dome:

http://www.sacbee.com/content/politics/sto...-11327114c.html

John Burton, President pro tem of the California State Senate, D-San Francisco, upon learning that governor Schwarzenegger’s administration was denying further state funding to cover cost overruns for building a new eastern span of the San Francisco Bay Bridge said, "The Bay Bridge is an interstate and a state highway. If it falls down, I don't know how people from L.A. get to Sacramento."

DUUUHHHH . . . . I-5 maybe? . . . straight shot up the valley . . . shortest and fastest route between the two cities. And it doesn’t involve the traffic nightmare of the SF Bay Area!

I would say that “Somewhere a circus is without its ringleader†but in this case . . .


There is a movement afloat in [Arnold voice on] "Caleforneia" [Arnold voice off] to revert the State Legislature back to the part time status from which it came. Gee, I wonder why.

Go Arnold! Kick nice person

 

Sufferin' Prius Envy
How would you stop forged out-of-state registrations from being used?.....


I wouldn’t. You can’t make any system perfect. People would cheat and many would cheat successfully. But many people cheat on taxes already.
I once had a friend who had a VW diesel years ago. He had home heating oil delivered to his house then filled his gas tank with that stuff. So he never paid any gas taxes for as long as he owned that car.


Sufferin' Prius Envy
How would you stop someone from transferring gas from one car to another? For instance, if I owned a Prius and a Hummer (please shoot me if I ever do) . . . I would take the Prii to buy the cheap gas and then transfer it to the Hummer. Or better yet, have my wife drive the Hummer up to the gas pump using the other lane, fill up the Prii . . . then fill up the Hummer - all on the Prii’s bar code.


Again, I’m not sure what you could do. In any case, I don’t think the difference between the Prius tax and the Hummer’s tax should be all that wide. The wider it is, the greater the temptation to cheat. Currently my state and federal gas taxes are about 60 cents. Maybe make the Prius about 30 cents and make the Hummer about 75 cents per gallon, just for illustration. Now if people want to risk a big fine to save $20 in taxes or so, so be it. But the logistics of doing that week after week would get pretty old, and in all likelihood they would eventually get caught. But even if they didn’t, shit happens and people cheat. You can’t make a system that is foolproof and at the same time protects the civil rights of the innocent.

But I think that this kind of tax system is inherently fairer than taxing people on how far they drive, but it’s clearly not foolproof.

 

Sorry if someone already suggested this; it's a long thread and i may have missed something:

Simple solution:

An annual fee based on ODO reading and vehicle weight, to account for actual wear and tear on the roads, along with a hefty gas tax increase so the more you burn the more you pay. States that already do emissions testing might add in an emission factor to the annual fee.

 

ok then also provide proof of all your out of state visits and the mileage that was driven on city streets that dont come under state highway supervison or budget.

as i said, there shouldnt even be a disscussion on how to go about the BS legislation. shoot it down before it has a chance to get up!!