Did you go green? Yep, that's going to be taxed too.

[_bcspace]

Thus eliminating the incentive to go green in the first place.....

Oregon state officials are proposing an alternative tax for drivers who have bought efficient or electric vehicles that seldom or never stop at the gasoline pump, where government has traditionally collected money to build and fix roads.

But the auto-making industry calls the idea of mileage taxes another roadblock for its efficient vehicles, the Salem Statesman Journal (http://stjr.nl/1345J8v) reports.

In its upcoming session, the Oregon Legislature is expected to consider a bill to require drivers with a vehicle getting at least 55 miles per gallon of gasoline or its equivalent to pay a per-mile tax after 2015.

Because it raises taxes, such legislation would need approval by three-fifths votes in both the House and Senate.

The tax would be based on mileage reports that could be made in a variety of ways, such as via smartphone app or global positioning system technology. Drivers could also just pay a flat annual fee.

Lawmakers would have to decide on the rates. The proposed bill leaves that part blank.

Oregon transportation officials have been working for more than a decade to figure out how to pay for roads as cars get extra efficient with gasoline, or use batteries. Those developments upset the usual taxation scheme of charging taxes by the gallon at the gasoline pump, an approximate way of charging more for greater use of the roads.

"Everybody uses the road, and if some pay and some don't, then that's an unfair situation that's got to be resolved," said Jim Whitty of the Department of Transportation.

Other states, including Washington, have looked at per-mile charges. A Washington law that would charge electric car owners an annual fee goes into effect in February.

Opponents of the Oregon proposal say it will hurt a new industry.

"It will be one more obstacle that the industry and auto dealers will face in convincing consumers to buy these new cars," said Paul Cosgrove, a lobbyist for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers.

Oregon set up a task force in 2001 and did a pilot study in 2006, which raised privacy concerns _ the government could track cars as they use private roads or leave the state. Whitty said the options drivers would have in the new proposal address those concerns.

A second pilot project has involved about 50 participants, mostly state transportation officials and lawmakers. They pay 1.56 cents per mile and get a credit for any gasoline tax they paid at the pump.

Oregon Transportation Commissioner Mary Olson tracked whether she would be charged for miles on private roads by comparing results from her odometer and the GPS-based mileage reporting device.

"It was scary accurate," she said. "I was very pleased."

The per-mile charge wouldn't apply to mileage on private or out-of-state roads.

A similar bill that applied to electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids didn't make it to the House floor in 2011.

The new bill resolves uncertainties about the per-mile charge, said Rep. Vicki Berger of Salem, top Republican on the House Revenue Committee and a member of the Road User Fee Task Force,

"There's a basic unfairness around that tax, and everyone is looking for the magic way to at least get the ball rolling on a different way of doing this, one that reconnects mileage with taxes paid," Berger said.

http://theworldlink.com/news/state-and-regional/ore-to-consider-per-mile-tax-for-gas-sippers/article_6bdc6363-d902-51a2-b9d4-bea6e570a9db.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFEKnmlyCS0

[_Analytics]

People are continuing to drive a lot, yet tax revenues going down because they are purchasing less petroleum. That is a wonderful problem to have—it indicates that we are becoming less dependent on a finite resource, the consumption of which is harmful to the environment.

The low-tax-small-government-free-market solution to this is for the government to sell all of the roads and right-of-ways to the highest bidder. The new owners of the roads would then be free to use the assets they purchased to maximize their profits—for example, they could charge tolls and generate money through advertising on billboards.

Without the obligation to maintain roads, the government could eliminate the tax on gasoline, and consequently there wouldn’t be a shortfall of tax revenue from people upgrading to vehicles that consumed less gas.

Remember, when the government collects gas taxes to build and maintain the highway system, they aren’t creating wealth—at best they are merely redistributing wealth. Privatize the entire system, and the new owners would generate an immense amount of wealth. That’s good for everybody.

[_Analytics]

From the perspective of an intelligent conservative, excise taxes on gasoline are in fact a great way fund our highway system. It’s a pretty fair and efficient way to do it—the more you drive the more you pay. One problem though is that the tax can be unfairly dodged by purchasing an electric car—you still get to use the roads, but you don’t contribute the excise taxes on gasoline that make the continued existence of the roads possible.

Thus, the current situation is that people who fund the roads through purchasing gas are subsidizing people who use the roads but buy little or no gas. Liberals would say that this subsidization is appropriate because it rewards people for doing the noble thing of driving efficient cars. Intelligent conservatives would agree that some subsidization is probably in order because of the externalities associated with burning gasoline—the person who burns gasoline gets all of the benefit, but society as a whole pays some of the cost because you burning gas harms everybody’s environment.

So the question is, how much should people who meet their transportation needs with gasoline subsidize the people who don’t? From his OP, BCSpace clearly believes the government should pay big subsidies to people who drive efficient cars. I'm glad he's becoming more liberal in his thinking.

[Guest]

From his OP, BCSpace clearly believes the government should pay big subsidies to people who drive efficient cars. I'm glad he's becoming more liberal in his thinking.

Yes, he obviously wants drivers of gasoline vehicles to pay more for roads. It's surprising.


(Of course, we both know that BC is merely trolling, as usual, with no intention of actually discussing the topic.

There is no bigger troll on the board. He has probably started more than half of the threads in this forum, with his only contribution usually being the first post.)

[_EAllusion]

There's a problem with the privatization of roads in that the government still would retain near total control over who can build roads and where. This is a naturally anti-competitive limitation and an obvious risk for private companies to manipulate the government into giving them defacto monopoly power over the road system. I like the idea of privatizing the roads, but it has to be done in a way that avoids cronyism and corruption where the government still is the real monopoly and they are merely contracting out the profits to companies. Private prisons are still government prisons. The government is just contracting out who can make a profit off the service and building a firewall inbetween any systemic faults and political action against it. Selling off the road system strikes me as a similar bargain.

With respect to this issue, I think a toll system, especially now that it can be done so unobtrusively, is the way to go. GPS tracking of miles seems like it would be huge target for abuse by the criminal justice system.

[_bcspace]

From his OP, BCSpace clearly believes the government should pay big subsidies to people who drive efficient cars.

Where do you get that notion? All I've done is point out a bait and switch.

[_Analytics]

From his OP, BCSpace clearly believes the government should pay big subsidies to people who drive efficient cars.

Where do you get that notion? All I've done is point out a bait and switch.

Your tone implies you are opposed to an alternative tax for drivers who have bought efficient or electric vehicles. That implies you are in favor of them continuing to receive subsidies.

[_cinepro]

Your tone implies you are opposed to an alternative tax for drivers who have bought efficient or electric vehicles. That implies you are in favor of them continuing to receive subsidies.

The only problem I would have is the degree to which drivers of hybrid or electric vehicles "did the math" and factored their savings on gasoline into the equation. But obviously such calculations already have a huge variable (the price of gas), so introducing another variable (direct road-use taxes) isn't a moral outrage.

Assuming they ever did the math at all...

http://www.edmunds.com/industry-center/ ... -back.html