Do We Need A Vehicle Mileage Tax?
President Obama firmly rejected a proposal from Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood to enact a tax based on how many miles motorists drive throughout the year, according to AP writer Joan Lowy. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs remarked on the proposal,
“It is not and will not be the policy of the Obama administration”
The aim of the proposed tax was to shift the burden of funding and repairing the nation’s aging road infrastructure onto the shoulders of those who used (and presumably contributed to its decay) most.
Does A Vehicle Mileage Tax Make Sense?
At first glance, the proposal makes a good deal of sense. After all, why should those who do relatively little driving pay for roads they’ll hardly ever use personally? Upon further inspection, however, this argument begins to break down.
First of all, we already have a tax that heavy drivers pay more of than light drivers: the gasoline tax. On closer inspection, the gasoline tax actually accomplishes everything the mileage tax attempts to accomplish and more. A mileage tax, for example, would be a flat rate per mile. It doesn’t matter if your car gets 10 mpg or 50 mpg, you’d pay the exact same tax for every mile you drive. The problem with this, of course, is that it doesn’t encourage fuel efficiency. Since fuel-efficient vehicles pollute the environment substantially less than gas-guzzlers, it’s in society’s best interests to encourage their use. The gas tax does that while the mileage tax does not.
Another concern is privacy. The only practical way to track mileage is via some sort of GPS technology, which leads to all kinds of obvious Big Brother scenarios. Sure, you could build something into future automobiles to facilitate mileage tracking, but that wouldn’t work on older vehicles. And what if you drive to Canada or Mexico? You’d need a way to recognize that international mileage doesn’t count. Chairman of the National Surface Transportation Infrastructure Financing Commission Rob Atkinson claims privacy concerns are more a matter of perception than actual risk, but as a professional software developer I don’t buy that for a second. Atkinson claims the information would be beamed one-way to the car and downloaded at gas stations, with the amount of tax due the only thing reported. But those of us familiar with the inner workings of such technology know how extraordinarily easy it would be to circumvent that system and create a monumental breach of privacy. No thanks.
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The privacy is my main problem with it. It wouldn’t be hard to also add a speed tax to this since you would already be measuring the distance traveled and logging the time…
What if you have 2 cars? I see a big incentive to drive the less driven car to the station, fill up a bunch of gas containers and put the relatively cheaper gas in your main car.
All of these situations are rubbish, this is only Big Brother trying to get more control in our lives and track where we go.
It is hard to believe dozens of transportation experts could meet for two years to evaluate over 30 alternatives to the current flat per-gallon gas tax and not even consider a tax based on efficient vehicle assessment (EVA). As you know, a congressional commission has recommended to Congress and the DOT that a vehicle mileage tax (VMT) is the best alternative (having not considered an EVA tax) and at least 17 states (including MA) are now actively considering VMT. This is a very bad choice for several reasons, including that by taxing miles and not efficiency the VMT treats the Hummer as it does the hybrid or motorbike. In fact, a Hummer used in the suburbs to go from home to the local mall will pay less tax per gallon than will small vehicles that happen to be in a rural area (which obviously and unavoidably means longer drives). VMT also requires a massive effort and expense to equip all vehicles with mileage tracking mechanisms (GPS, odometer-reading, etc.) And, of course, it raises enormous privacy issues. A better name for it might be “Track ‘n Tax”.
EVA, on the other hand, does create an incentive to drive efficient vehicles (an incentive noticeable at each visit to the pump, not just upon purchase of the vehicle). It is a software installed at the pump that will calculate each vehicle’s per-gallon rate based on current VIN data (make, model, weight, year, etc.). A Hummer, therefore, would pay a much higher per gallon rate than the Ford Escort.
EVA is fair to rurual drivers. It requires each vehicle simply put a VIN barcoded decal on the windshield; the government structure is in place for this (RMV, DMV, etc.). And EVA raises no privacy issues.
If you want to discuss, feel free to email me at eva@corecomputergroup.com