It’s Fix the Tax Code Friday! This week, there has been a lot of discussion across the internet about “going Dutch” a la the pay-per-kilometer system recently passed in Amsterdam.
So today’s Fix the Tax Code Friday question is:
Should the US consider a pay-per-mile tax system to pay for roads and other infrastructures?
If your answer is no, would that change if the US adopted the Dutch policy of abolishing the current road taxes and sales taxes for cars in exchange for the pay-per-mile system?
Unless I’m missing something, this is a mind-bogglingly idiotic idea. Require every car to add several hundred dollars’ worth of equipment, send signals all over the place, make everyone mad by being Big Brother (can you imagine how much Americans would hate this?), all to accomplish nothing more than you could do just by jacking up fuel taxes.
Seriously, what am I missing here? How would raising the gas tax not accomplish the same thing, at no cost, instead of billions of dollars in cost, plus compliance issues (I know software/hardware geeks who would delight in producing and selling illegal hacks to the GPS, to make it look like you drove less than you did). Talk about a complex “solution” to a simple problem!
Urb
In Oregon we have a gasoline tax. You pay it for your mower, weeder, blower, etc. Visitors to the state pay it, also. Much better, easier, and hits all gasoline sold in Oregon. Why change something that is working. The percent might need to go up every so often to cover higher road costs. Also, I’ve never seen a tax dropped to add another one. NO, to a pay per mile. PL
I agree with you regarding that this is an idiotic idea…
However, fuel taxes are uneven depending on the car you drive….and realistically, I drive a car with good mpg simply because it is cheaper for me to operate…I drive about 25k miles a year so I shudder to think I would have to pay per mile…
Unless I am incorrect, many people in the Netherlands travel without cars…cars tend to be a luxury, so that makes sense…
Europe, Singapore, possibly others who expect to use this to raise money for infrastructure, all are small areas, have great mass transit, and high fees, road use taxes, Central Business District high volume time rates, etc to discourage car ownship.
America is and probably into the future in love with their wheels. We would not like having the freedom a car gives.
The tax may work in dense populated areas, NYC, Boston, DC, LA, Chicago, but in the South particularly, distant is an issue. To have a good earning job, must must drive, sometimes 30-50 miles one way. The red-necks in the woods would not like paying a tax to roll their truck in a mud-bog. Nor would my working neighbors who live 40 miles from the Marine base at LeJeune, protectors of the country who have to live a distant from the base as there is no reasonable and safe housing nearby, or adequate base housing for the numbers there.
Common sense says to raise the revenue, use the existing system, the gas tax paid at the pump. If you want that Dodge Ram dual wheel truck, like my son, then you have to pay the expenses associated with it.
In NC, the biggest user of trucks on the roads are the container transports out of the Port City of Wilmington to Charlotte or Raleigh. Much talk has bee made about rail service from the port to these cities, establishing two inland port terminals. Take the trucks off the road, and road maintenance would decrease.
No to a pay-by-the-mile tax. Not a fair tax, nor reasonable for a country the size of USA and the lack of mass transit.
Let’s quit the ideas to add new taxes. We’re the most taxed generation in the history of the world, and wouldn’t you know, we have the most government, and the most problems to fix.
We should privatize the roads and let business fix them since they will do it at a significantly lower cost. It’s amazing the roads are the biggest killer in the world, and yet the manager gets a break because the government runs them. Give them to someone that will fix them, make them safer, and do it cheaper.