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Oregon Governor Proposes Vehicle Mileage Tax
Posted by
timothy
on Tue Dec 30, 2008 03:38 PM
from the if-you-have-nothing-to-hide dept.
from the if-you-have-nothing-to-hide dept.
tiedyejeremy writes "As covered by the Crosscut Blog, the Governor of Oregon, Ted Kulongoski, is proposing a change in the funding of the Oregonian transportation system that drops gasoline taxes and, by way of GPS tracking, taxes the number of miles driven, to the tune of 1.2 cents per mile. The reason for the proposed change is that lower fuel consumption via fuel efficiency will leave the system underfunded. The concerns involve government tracking of the movements of vehicles within the state, though this has been denied by ODOT official, James Whitty. I'm wondering how this affects people using the Interstate System and private roads, and if the outputs can or will be used by law enforcement to check alibis."
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Pay-As-You-Drive Car Insurance 472 comments
Sipos writes "The BBC has a story about pay-as-you-drive car insurance. There is not that much detail about how it would work but it seems that a black box in your car monitors your position using GPS. This information is then reported to a insurance company computer which then works out which roads you used and then bills you accordingly. The article seems to suggest that this will make insurance cheaper. Surely this will only happen for people who drive on dangerous roads less than average, after all there are no less accidents as a result? It also makes no mention of the potential for abuse of privacy this could involve. Are people really prepared to let insurance companies track their every move to save money on car insurance?"
[+]
California Considers Tracking Your Car 902 comments
dan_sdot writes "California's budget problem has led the state to consider desperate measures: taxing you based on how much you drive. The only problem is the way they propose to do it. California is now proposing to put GPS devices on all new cars to track how far people drive and tax them accordingly."
[+]
California Wants GPS Tracking Device in Every Car 1351 comments
HTS Member writes "California has a new excuse for more taxes. Claiming losses due to fuel-efficient cars, such as Gasoline/Electric Hybrids, California is cooking-up a new system to punish people who aren't using enough gasoline. They want to tax commuters by the mile. How would this be accomplished? By requiring everyone to install a GPS device in their vehicle, and charge them their "taxes" every time they fuel-up. From the article: 'Drivers will get charged for how many miles they use the roads, and it's as simple as that.. [a] team at Oregon State University equipped a test car with a global positioning device to keep track of its mileage. Eventually, every car would need one.'"
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Great idea - it can replace the Gas Tax! (Score:5, Insightful)
Except for the part where they leave the gas tax in place.
Re:Great idea - it can replace the Gas Tax! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Great idea - it can replace the Gas Tax! (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Great idea - it can replace the Gas Tax! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Great idea - it can replace the Gas Tax! (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, there's two problems with the gas tax.
1. As a road usage tax it doesn't take into consideration gas for equipment like lawn mowers and chainsaws.
2. It doesn't take into consideration driving done on private roads or roads not maintained by the government.
#2 is pretty big in Oregon due to the amount of logging they do. There's a lot of people who spend most of their time driving on logging trails. #2 is also the reason why GPS tracking of miles driven is dumb. It could very well count miles driven on private roads.
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As an Oregonian, higher gas tax, not a milage tax! (Score:5, Insightful)
As an Oregon resident, I'll state my preference for a higher gas tax for just these reasons.
A gas tax simply aligns with the public externalities of motor vehicles a lot better than just milage, since bigger cars cause more wear. There's no incentive for buying less damaging vehicles this way. Also, gas taxes are easy to collect, while this is more complex. Net revenue will be reduced by the cost of monitoring, plus there's the initial capital cost of getting the whole thing set up.
And while all taxes cause some distortion in the market, it's best to pick ones where the distortion is the least painful or disruptive, or otherwise aligned with society goals. Reducing petroleum imports and carbon emissions are both clear public goals. If consumption is going down, the tax is doing what it should, and so the best thing to do is to raise it to maintain the incentive to get smaller, more efficient vehicles that we saw last summer.
Since governments at all levels need funding, higher gas taxes seem like one of the best options. And a high tax sets a minimum on gas prices, and so a floor for how inefficient a vehicle people are willing to take. A $0.50 gallon tax, split evenly between states and the fed, would pay for a whole lot of economic recovery, give a stable floor to the value of alternative energy, and still be way cheaper than it was a few months ago. Right now, we're seeing state governments cutting services and payroll at the very time we need an expansionist policy nationwide to avoid deflation. The net effect is the federal government will need to borrow and spent even more money to balance out the state cuts before we can even start climbing out of the hole (if state payrolls drop by 500K, that means the fed employment target from the stimulus plan needs to be 3.5M, not 3.0M, to have the same effect).
I'd much rather see our governor recommend raising the gas tax by $0.25, drop this milage/GPS nonsense, and restore funding to education, get the new I-5 bridge started, etcetera.
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Re:Great idea - it can replace the Gas Tax! (Score:5, Insightful)
"Very, very few people if any are able to completely avoid the public system. Groceries, utilities, emergency services, those things all require a maintained public street system for nearly all the work. So even those that theoretically don't drive on public roads are still benefiting from the ability to do so."
Any goods delivered on a public road system are delivered by vehicles driving on that road which require fuel to run which is in turn taxed. I suppose people like me freeload a bit when we walk a few blocks to the grocery store on the nice sidewalks and roads instead of driving a car which pay for road upkeep through fuel consumption, but I still have to drive to work and other places so they invariably get me in the end. Of course there might be a few people who use the public roadways without driving a car at all. My personal belief is that these people should get a free pass as they're choosing a means of conveyance that will keep them healthier without adding to the amount of pollution in a given area. I think that the small amount of money lost from these people is made up in other areas.
Gas tax works remarkably well for the most part and is probably one of most fair taxes that I could think of off of the top of my head. The only problem is that as we shift towards electric cars and hybrids we're still using the roads but not using the fuel. At that point it probably just makes more sense to have the state apply some other form of tax. A flat tax per vehicle per year works out well enough, but it does tend to punish those who don't use their vehicle as often. If they really wanted, they could just set up toll booths and collect funds that way as well.
The proposed solution seems nice, but I feel as though it's overly complex and would require significant cost to implement at this point; never mind the potential for abuse.
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Re:Great idea - it can replace the Gas Tax! (Score:5, Insightful)
If the real problem involves electric vehicles, then they could... wait for it... increase taxes on electricity!! There you go. Problem solved. No need for intrusive GPS tracking. If the problem involves the batteries in hybrid cars, then they can pay some mathmeticians to calculate the cost savings of the batteries, and then tax the production or sale of the cars to offset the revenue lost. Once again, no tracking necessary.
Of course the REAL issue isn't completely related to the loss of revenues from the fuel tax. The real issue is that the government feels like they own us. They believe that they can go crazy with tracking us like merchandise. That is my big, fat, off-topic gripe for this thread. Our government has devolved from our fellow citizens serving their communities, to our fellow citizens trying to dictate our lives to us.
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Re:Great idea - it can replace the Gas Tax! (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Great idea - it can replace the Gas Tax! (Score:5, Interesting)
Well that's the point, isn't it... well, maybe.
Not sure about the USA, but in NL you pay all sorts of taxes on gas (one of the highest in the world) + a road use tax. Both go toward, among other, road maintenance as well.
As cars get more efficient in terms of gas use, the gov't wallet slims down.. but given the same car in terms of e.g. weight, footprint (literal - i.e. tires-on-road), it doesn't matter whether you're super-efficient or the worst gas guzzler in the world... you're still putting the same wear-and-tear on that road. Ergo, they have to..
A. increase gas prices more
B. increase road use taxes more
C. create a new (context-dependent) per-mile (kilometer) tax
D. go with a bit of A, drop B and implement C -and- add an entirely new tax that -everybody- pays.. whether you actually drive a car or not, as dropping B does not get compensated enough by A and C.
Of course they spin this as a positive thing, as those who drive a lot will now pay more, while those who drive say 20,000km/year will be off much cheaper... thanks in part to those driving 0km/year helping pay. ho hum.
( not that I'm fervently opposed to it - my goods are delivered by road, so even if I don't travel on it.. transport companies do - but I was under the impression I already paid for transportation cost by paying for the product. hmpf. )
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Re:Great idea - it can replace the Gas Tax! (Score:5, Informative)
Free health care and you pay less in taxes than Americans. Most Americans insist that isn't true, and it's not if you make over a million a year.
There may be a reason that most Americans insist this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_rates_of_Europe [wikipedia.org]
Not only is the income tax higher - often considerably - but on top of that there's that lovely VAT.
But hey, enjoy your fantasies.
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Re:Great idea - it can replace the Gas Tax! (Score:5, Interesting)
My jaw dropped when I saw that page. Until I saw "The quoted income tax rate is, except where noted, the top rate of tax: Most jurisdictions have lower rate of taxes for low levels of income."
That was the difference between the stated 54.3% that page states and my 18% taxes paid.
I live in Norway BTW, which arguably has one of the best healtcare systems in the world.
So it's not a fantasy. It's a reality.
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Re:Great idea - it can replace the Gas Tax! (Score:5, Informative)
It's either/or: If the gas pump detects your GPS computer, it charges you $.012/mile. Otherwise it charges you $.25/gallon. Or thereabouts, I haven't heard what the new gas tax portion is going to be.
Oh, and also it's only on NEW cars- old cars are grandfathered into the gas tax.
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Re:Great idea - it can replace the Gas Tax! (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, and also it's only on NEW cars- old cars are grandfathered into the gas tax.
I wonder then if there would be any penalty to hacking the device (for the technophiles) or just ripping the GPS out (for the less technically inclined) of a newer vehicle to avoid the privacy issues. I don't want to be tracked, and it seems like the more fuel efficient cars would fare better by the gas tax method anyways.
Besides: why are we pushing legislation that puts gas guzzlers and fuel efficent hybrids back onto even footing when it comes to taxes? Shouldn't tax rates ENCOURAGE fuel efficient vehicles? If underfunding is the problem just raise the gas tax to make up for it.
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Re:Great idea - it can replace the Gas Tax! (Score:5, Interesting)
GPS unit 1341235423523 bought 50 gallons of gas but only drove 50 miles per the GPS. Odd that Prius is only getting 1 MPG.
Aside from extreme examples, I look forward to watching tax agents bust down doors of people whom have poorly maintained cars because they "must" be tax cheats. My old 1980's plymouth horizon got 30 MPG on a good day, but when the choke stuck during winter I was lucky to get double digit MPGs on short trips.
I suspect the next step is location based taxes. For example parking a car within 500 feet of a church is free, yet anyone whom parks within 500 feet of an adult video stores will have their visit documented on a public web site and charged a $50 parking fee. Or anyone whom doesn't attend / park nearby a church every week will pay a higher tax "Y".
Then of course there are the known tobacco smokers whom drive within X feet of a public school where it's illegal to have or use tobacco products within X feet. Or gunowners. Etc.
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Re:Great idea - it can replace the Gas Tax! (Score:5, Interesting)
What I don't get is this: why in h*ll would they put a privacy-violating GPS device in to count mileage when:
Even if we assume that the GPS will merely be used to determine where you are, half the Oregon borders are in the mountains, so you may well find yourself getting billed for miles not driven within the state. Not to mention that you're probably adding a couple hundred bucks to the cost of every automobile, all for the sole purpose of giving the government more revenue.
To add insult to injury, at 1.2 cents per mile, you would have to go almost 17,000 extra miles in that hybrid beyond what you would have gotten on that amount of fuel in a non-hybrid car. With typical hybrids getting maybe 5-10% higher MPG on average, the break-even point is when the car has gone between 170k and 340k miles. If everybody just paid that same $200 to the state as a tax on the sale of a new vehicle, it would give the state probably twice as much money as they would make off of this, all for the same cost to the consumer, all without violating people's privacy.
Here's a more sane proposal: when you apply for your tags, make one line on the form be the current odometer reading. Charge an additional license fee based on the mileage. Once the vehicle starts going in for smog checks, this can be corroborated by periodic reporting by the smog check station, so there's low risk of significant cheating.
Allow people who do a substantial amount of out-of-state driving to apply for a tax credit on his/her personal income tax for driving outside the state. Require them to provide some corroborating evidence (receipts from out of state hotels or gas stations during the period in question, pay stubs proving an out-of-state job, etc.).
By making the small percentage of people who regularly drive outside the state spend an extra ten minutes filling out their income tax forms, you save the cost of additional hardware in new vehicles, additional hardware at the pumps (the cost of which will be paid by everyone), etc. and you avoid all the privacy questions. More to the point, since all new cars sold anywhere would then have to have these devices (since car makers won't build a separate model just for Oregon, even if these GPS devices only cost $100, my plan will save almost 2 billion dollars annually nationwide in unnecessary hardware when compared with the Oregon governor's plan.
Just to put that number in perspective, that's billion with a 'B'---enough money to bail out on the order of 20,000 home owners who are defaulting on their mortgages. Anyone in favor of something so asinine should be publicly flogged.... The people of Oregon deserve someone with better math and problem solving skills than this....
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Re:Taxation without representation (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like the opposite of taxation without representation. I don't live in Oregon, but with this proposal I can drive through the place and pay less tax than the locals. Woohoo!
Oregon is weird. They've outlawed self service at gas stations. Since I don't care to pay to have some high school klutz spill gas on the ground when filling up my tank, I make sure to gas up across the border whenever I do go that way.
Just watch out for the sales tax on the motel room. The whole nation has got on the bandwagon of screwing the traveler with extra taxes on motels, rental cars, and all the stuff only visitors need. Now that's taxation without representation.
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Re:Taxation without representation (Score:5, Informative)
First, let me tell you my qualification to discuss Oregon taxes. I lived there for 12 years, and worked there as an out of stater from Washington for 8.
Currently, something like 45 states have a sales tax. Oregonians have rejected a sales tax for a variety of reasons, one of which being that they think the income tax won't go away entirely and they will just get double taxed.
Also, rich people certainly pay more in absolute dollars per capita under an income tax but it's not linear. Higher bracket households have disproportionately more tax deductions than lower income households and don't pay the same percentages.
Sales tax doesn't entirely fix this disparity since higher income households are the most likely to make major purchases from out of state due to availability of the types of goods they often buy.
One serious annoyance for me was that I worked about 3 miles into Oregon while living in Washington and had to pay OR state income tax while receiving no tangible benefits for this tax. I used about 6 miles of road per day, that's it. And to top it off, my state income tax didn't even give me the right to vote on HOW they spend my money.
So, back to your question. Sales tax is generally favorable to income tax in my opinion. I don't think it will ever work for Oregon though. They depend on workers from southern Washington to prop up their income tax and that would disappear if they switch to a sales tax. Also, literally billions of dollars annually are pumped into the Portland metro area by shoppers from WA state looking to avoid their own sales tax.
Yes, its illegal but it happens every day.
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Uh (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. It's essentially a subsidy for inefficient vehicles.
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Re:Uh (Score:5, Insightful)
And it's blatantly obvious that tracking people is really the reason they want it too. If they just wanted to tax people per distance traveled they could simply check the odometer once a year -- they don't need GPS tracking for that!
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WTF do they need GPS for? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why just use the fancy new technology called an odometer [wikipedia.org]? Check it every time you renew your registration and collect the fees at that time.
Re:WTF do they need GPS for? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:WTF do they need GPS for? (Score:5, Interesting)
And GPS drops out from time to time. What's the state going to do to people who "accidentily" build a faraday cage around the antenna?
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Re:WTF do they need GPS for? (Score:5, Insightful)
Or they could just... increase the gas tax. I know. Its a maverick idea.
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Re:WTF do they need GPS for? (Score:5, Insightful)
Or they could just... increase the gas tax. I know. Its a maverick idea.
With the added benefit of taxing gas-hogs proportionally higher - works for me.
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Re:WTF do they need GPS for? (Score:5, Insightful)
Some South American countries use the tire tax, so everyone drives around on "superlast, hard as rocks" tires to beat the tax rate - can't be good for safety.
I think that taxing each gallon of fuel is the right way to go, if 0.24 isn't enough, make it 0.48 - we just demonstrated that the world doesn't end when gas passes $3 a gallon.
Taxing fuel:
I think the governor is just talking to get himself heard, drivers of big gas hog vehicles (likely the majority of his constituency) will love the idea, but lawmakers would have to have several screws loose to think this is a good or practical idea.
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Re:WTF do they need GPS for? (Score:4, Insightful)
They likely want something in the guise of "repealing the gas tax" to make themselves look great to the math-challenged masses.
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Re:WTF do they need GPS for? (Score:5, Insightful)
Odometers don't track in-state mileage versus out-of-state mileage. The article isn't clear on if that matters to the plan here (it might only tax in-state driving, for example), but there's this little snippet about the test run:
A GPS-based system kept track of the in-state mileage driven by the volunteers. When they bought fuel, a device in their vehicles was read, and they paid 1.2 cents a mile and got a refund of the state gas tax of 24 cents a gallon.
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Re:WTF do they need GPS for? (Score:4, Insightful)
A GPS-based system kept track of the in-state mileage driven by the volunteers. When they bought fuel, a device in their vehicles was read, and they paid 1.2 cents a mile and got a refund of the state gas tax of 24 cents a gallon.
So, this only benefits people who get less than 20mpg - since my car [mangocats.com] gets about 24mpg on average, I think I'd rather save the money _and_ keep my privacy intact.
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Re:WTF do they need GPS for? (Score:5, Informative)
You really think an odometer is harder to tamper with than a GPS tracking unit?
Ignoring direct alteration of tracking data stored on media that you have physical access to -- which is well within the realm of possibility for anyone with a JTAG interface (and quite probably anyone with a serial interface) -- you could simply add a local GPS simulator to your vehicle so the government-mandated unit always got radio signals telling it the car was sitting in your driveway. Such hacking is totally wireless -- it requires no electrical interface to the GPS system -- so it could be added/removed or activated/deactivated even by a brain-dead tax-dodger.
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Re:WTF do they need GPS for? (Score:4, Insightful)
I know someone at the Uni who was involved in the initial testing for this system. What you say is the main reason why GPS instead of odometer. If you drive in downtown Portland during peak hours, you will pay through the nose. If you drive all your miles in Valley Junction, you will pay a lot less. Also, off-road use is supposed to be tax-free, and currently you have to file for a rebate of those taxes to get your money back at the end of the year.
My friend could simply not understand that paying rates based on time/location means logging driving times and locations as well as miles, and that this data could easily be used to track people and be used against them for all sorts of things. Insurance companies would love this, as well as cops and all sorts of other investigators. "Well, well, Mrs. Lincoln, we see the GPS in your car shows you meeting with a Mr. Booth ..."
ODOT, of course, is denying that any logging will take place. Flat out. Won't happen. They know what chance this has of working of they admit the obvious, and too many people don't understand technology well enough to know what has to happen for the magic to take place. Even my friend, an otherwise very smart engineer and all around nice woman, doesn't get it. Why would Joe Smith?
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Judas Priest foretold it! (Score:4, Interesting)
And Jeremy Bentham, but who the hell remembers him? And now, here's how to rock:
Electric Eye by Judas Priest
Up here in space
Im looking down on you
My lasers trace
Everything you do
You think youve private lives
Think nothing of the kind
There is no true escape
Im watching all the time
Im made of metal
My circuits gleam
I am perpetual
I keep the country clean
Im elected electric spy
Im protected electric eye
Always in focus
You cant feel my stare
I zoom into you
You dont know Im there
I take a pride in probing all your secret moves
My tearless retina takes pictures that can prove
Im made of metal
My circuits gleam
I am perpetual
I keep the country clean
Im elected electric spy
Im protected electric eye
Electric eye, in the sky
Feel my stare, always there
Theres nothing you can do about it
Develop and expose
I feed upon your every thought
And so my power grows
Im made of metal
My circuits gleam
I am perpetual
I keep the country clean
Im elected electric spy
Im protected electric eye
Protected. detective. electric eye
Why not raise the tax on gas? (Score:4, Insightful)
It seems to me that if you tax a staple good, and people will be consuming less of that staple good due to an increase in efficiency... meaning you'll bring in less money from those taxes...
Then you raise the tax. What's the downside? It's not like people are going to consume less gas if the tax goes up.
Arguably, cranking the tax could also lead to people holding onto junker cars for sentimental reasons replacing them or repairing their engines. So really, it's win-win.
Actually it is exactly like that (Score:4, Informative)
Then you raise the tax. What's the downside? It's not like people are going to consume less gas if the tax goes up.
Actually, it's exactly like that. When the price of gas was up summer travel plummeted which impacted tourist destinations everywhere, even stuff in the same state where most of the visitors came from. Also less needed visits like mall visits or museum visits go down, as people cut back on non-essential travel.
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Re:Why not raise the tax on gas? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. This solution is so glaringly obvious that there must be some sinister reason they are ignoring it. I mean, seriously? You're going to go with a fancypants expensive satellite-based high-tech solution requiring lots of new legislation, training, infrastructure, and other costs, not to mention the overwhelming privacy violation -- instead of just raising the tax a little bit? What, seriously? I call shenanigans.
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Just the beginning. (Score:5, Interesting)
Add a few more players to the game, and you get:
- A national system of tollways, with microcharging so it's useable on roads of any size
- A billing system for parking stations, event parking, or even roadside parking at all in city zones
- Ability to charge more for certain roads during peak periods (like a congestion tax)
- A speed tax?
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Re:Why not raise the tax on gas? (Score:5, Interesting)
Gas is not that inelastic. When the price of gas hit $4/gal., I got a bus pass. There's a park-and-ride right by my house, and the express goes straight downtown to where I work. And I now spend 25 minutes each way on leisure reading rather than fighting traffic. Now that gas is cheap, I still ride the bus. Basically, whoever decided to put on the squeeze made a permanent convert. I probably won't ever go back to driving myself. Between gas and parking, I save $200 to $300 a month and I save myself lots of trouble.
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I can solve this problem! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I can solve this problem! (Score:5, Insightful)
Because I love my children more than the "poor, uninsured, orphan, elementary school children" and don't want to burden THEM with leveraged debt. Oh, and I get the side benefit of, gasp, not leveraging those others with the same debt!
Wow, how novel is THAT???
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Priorities (Score:5, Insightful)
Except weight and mileage DOES count... (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is, fuel efficient cars weigh less, and therefore do less damage to the road.
Thus a gasoline tax is actually better at putting many of the costs on the actual source: heavier, less efficient vehicles. As a bonus, fuel taxes encourage smaller, lighter, more efficient cars which are better for society in the long run.
Re:Except weight and mileage DOES count... (Score:4, Interesting)
I have heard (but can't seem to verify via google etc) that road damage goes up with the fourth power of vehicle weight, with the square of the speed and (naturally) linearly with miles travelled. So, to get people to pay proportional to the amount of road work needed, if I pay $1 for my car, a semi (with reasonable assumptions about speed and miles travelled) should be paying $500,000 or more - the weight is by far the largest factor and when multiplied by number of miles travelled gets big quickly. For lighter, more fuel efficient vehicles the numbers would be even larger.
This kind of tax, then, would penalize most drivers and essentially subsidize the trucking industry even more than is currently the case.
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Re:Except weight and mileage DOES count... (Score:4, Insightful)
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misplaced priorities? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm wondering how this affects people using the Interstate System and private roads, and if the outputs can or will be used by law enforcement to check alibis.
Let me get this straight. In a move straight from Orwell, they want to track every vehicle in the state for the purposes of getting more taxes out of people, and you're concerned about whether it can be used for alibis and whether there's a hole in the technical details?
I've got a few problems with this. My first reaction to the statement about more efficient cars is that they shouldn't be punishing people for buying those cars. More efficient cars are also the ones which do the least damage to the environment and the surfaces they drive on since they tend to weigh much less than the alternatives. Punishing those people for being efficient doesn't make sense. A better measure would be to raise the taxes on gasoline. One year ago the price was over double what it is now. Even adding $.50 or $1 to the tax wouldn't bring the prices to what they were.
My next objection would be the costs of the system. The infrastructure would cost a lot of money, it would raise the cost of cars sold in Oregon and also cost the state money in terms of fighting the inevitable legal battles which may render the system entirely worthless. It seems like a gross misuse of funds.
Finally, the philosophical objections. Inevitably, many people will have access to this information, and the abuses are many. They range from the government using it to track people to as simple as a stalker knowing where his victim is at all times. At the very least it would raise concerns with police abuses.
Overall, there is no way that this proposal is a good idea.
Astoundingly stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
The amount of damage done to a road by a passing vehicle is a geometric? exponential? function of the weight of the vehicle. For instance, say a road will fail if a 100,000 pound vehicle drives over it. In that case, a 120,000 pound truck would do much more damage than two 60,000 trucks. At the low end, you reach a point where no damage is done at all. It's not possible to ruin a modern highway with bicycles, for example.
So you're justified in taxing vehicles proportionally to their weight, since more weight means more damage, which means more expensive repairs. Conveniently enough, gas mileage is a useful proxy for vehicle weight: the heavier they are, the more gas tax they pay per mile.
I have no love for Priuses, but it's insane to tax them the same as someone in a semi truck. There are two possible explanations that don't involve Gov. Kulongoski being a stark moron:
Any Oregonians have insight on the matter?
Define vehicle (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh my, a mileage tax causes such warm and fuzzy feelings.
Trucking companies... (Score:4, Insightful)
Tax Circus (Score:5, Interesting)
Oregon is a circus of strange tax experiments. OR's income tax rates are relatively high (9%), but they do not have a sales tax. Discussions about introducing a sales tax are non-starters, as there are so many changes that multiple parties object. Economic gains/losses are magnified due to this, as the employment numbers rise/fall, but out-of-state shopper populations change on different cycles.
There is also a "kicker" that is given back when state revenue from taxes exceeds the estimate (budget) by 2% or more. But then the state spends about 1.3$million on mailing individual checks, tracking people down, etc - instead of simply putting tax credits on the books for the next year.
There have been serious talks about taxing/licensing bicycles due their use of roads (no idea if its by wheel, weight, speed, rider's age, etc). Portland, OR has a large population of cyclists that intermingle with cars on many local roads.
The state has a huge income disparity between urban and rural districts, and thus pools its school funding monies for dispersal but other statistics, which creates lots of friction all around.
Property taxes go up, but there are endless initiatives to deny funding increases to social services, since they are under constant accusal of being bloated. The truth depends on what you define as adequate social servicing.
See the Oregon Tax Revolt [wikipedia.org] for some info.
Obligatory: The Beatles and Orwell (Score:4, Insightful)
--
Taxman
The Beatles
Revolver
Seriously, people. Have we failed somewhere in transmitting the message that the Beatles song is *satire* and Orwell's DYS-topia is a *warning*!? It's not a cook book for Governments to follow to do that voodoo that they do!
Oh, that's a great idea. So THAT's how we can do that and get away with it! Now, how do we tax their feet?