The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) on Tuesday said the imposition of a new tax on cars and trucks based on how many miles they drive would be one way of generating revenues for the federal Highway Trust Fund.
Joseph Kile, CBO’s assistant director for microeconomic studies, told the Senate Finance Committee that a tax on vehicle miles traveled (VMT) would help the Highway Trust Fund meet its spending goals, in particular because the Fund is already spending more than it collects through the federal gas tax.
But he also said the tax would better align highway costs with revenue generation, and promote the more efficient use of the highway system.
I shudder to think what sort of IRS-like bureaucracy would need to be created to monitor the odometers on people’s cars.
And taxing eggs by the size of the yolk also could raise money for highways. This government knows no shame nor boundary.
*sigh* This fuel tax and that fuel tax were levied on us to fund transportation and infrastructure projects and then spent on other things. And this will be different, how?
Gee, and here I thought that we were already paying large taxes at the gas pump to provide for federal highway dollars. Silly me.
This is stupid. The gas tax effectively charges more for driving more, and has the added benefit of encouraging efficiency. In effect, it’s a mileage tax with a rate that’s higher for people with less efficient vehicles.
If the gas tax is insufficient to pay for the roads, increase the gas tax rate until the revenue is sufficient. Don’t come up with some new tax, collection, and monitoring system just because you’re afraid of adjusting the existing tax to fit changing circumstances.
effectively we already tax by the mile since you consume more gas by driving more, and pay more in gas taxes. so why do this too? no reason unless you think employing more bureaucrats to collect $$ in a separate account is a good plan…
I would agree with most of the recent posting on this and would add something else. The wear and tear(hence the need for repair) is not just mileage but also the vertical force e.g. the poundage. In extreme a bicycle driven a long way vs a very heavy lorry driving a short distance. Add to that the roads susceptibility is not linear a thousand light loads vs one brutally ponderous one. Another curious fact is that lightweight commuter cars of John Q Public average 10-15K miles per year vs a typical Rolls or Bentley massing about twice as much are likely to driven less than 5K. Their are some curious aerodynamic and frictional inefficiencies associated with non-rail freight transport but that is probably a separate topic.
[b]FORGET IT!![/b]
The New York State Thruway Authority began charging tolls after the Thomas E. Dewey Thruway was completed in 1955, and they’ve been at it ever since. The Thruway was supposed to have been paid for in just a few years. It was, but ever since then, the tolls have been used for road maintenance, departmental salaries, and wages. Once you start paying like this, [i]it never stops.[/i] So, be careful what you wish for: you just might get it.
For the last 30 years, the federal government has been reducing taxes – generally, as it has done this, other revenue streams have needed to be implemented.
As a culture, we seem to want wars, prisons, schools, an infrastructure, a competent bureaucracy, and a middle class. We are too stingy to pay for them (and succumb easily to the pygmalion effect). We are too selfish to recognize that we depend on the common trust of knowledge and the public sphere for our own individual wealth.
As a country, we are the most frugal in the western world. As well as the most stingy.
Don’t we already have a system in place to tax based on the miles driven and the size of the vehicle? It’s called a toll road.
Well, Maryland is getting ready to double its tolls– for starters. Meanwhile the newly opened, toll road MD 200 is seeing half the traffic that was projected.
A gas tax is a tax by the mile. The more one drives, the more one pays. People don’t like gas taxes, but they do approximate use and, because mileage also reflects vehicle weight, they approximate wear and tear caused by vertical loads on pavement.
#5: Tegularius. Yes, the gas tax should be increased. It’s insufficient because it’s a fixed amount per gallon. It should increase with inflation. Anyway, what’s another 5 cents per gallon when the price goes from $3 to $4 anyway?
[blockquote]As a culture, we seem to want wars, prisons, schools, an infrastructure, a competent bureaucracy, and a middle class. We are too stingy to pay for them (and succumb easily to the pygmalion effect). We are too selfish to recognize that we depend on the common trust of knowledge and the public sphere for our own individual wealth.[/blockquote]
The problem is not with paying for “wars, prisons, schools, an infrastructure, a competent bureaucracy, and a middle class.” The overwhelming portion of our taxes go to Social Security, Welfare, Medicare and Medicaid. Society has decided that individuals, families, communities, and states are incapable of taking care of themselves and those in need. Therefore, the federal government must do it. As history has shown, the federal government cannot provide adequate (let alone quality) services or control cost. This was true in communist countries like the Soviet Union, and even countries like Brittan where they are recognizing they have to cut back on their national health care system if they want to prevent a financial collapse.