Hello everyone!
Today I'm going to talk about the mileage tax. Now to many readers who live in the Pacific Northwest, the idea of a mileage tax may be viewed as another kooky 70's fad right up there with recycling co-ops, bioregional governments, Esperanto classes, mandatory yearly service at tree planting, JRR Tolkien puppet shows and street theater, community bathhouses, Italian- Chinese fusion cuisine, and the whole Appalachian folk revival thing. For those of you from, erm, less colorful parts of the nation there's a good to excellent chance you've never even heard of it.
But now the mileage tax has been seriously suggested not by yet another eccentric guy with a beard and ponytail, but by US Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. Although President Obama has so far been very reluctant to endorse the idea, it has gained some supporters in Congress such Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA). And since the idea has gone from obscure hippideom and eco-oriented science fiction, to the national conversation, I'm going to attempt a cogent discussion of the matter.
Perhaps the first question that comes up is "How can you accurately count miles driven in order to tax them?" The answer to that is that there are basically two practical methods to do it. Of course, other suggestions such as tolls roads have been proposed, but for regulating total number of miles driven it simply wouldn't be practical.
1) A GPS satellite tracking system-
This is the technocrat's favored method of counting automobile miles, but it is not popular with the ACLU or much of the US public. And this is the method that was used in a pilot program in Oregon with a relatively small number of drivers. Technically this is probably them most accurate way to count miles driven by a car. But to many people it raises the spectre of "Big Brother".
The pilot program used in Oregon was designed so that only the number of miles would be retained in the database with no possibility of tracking drivers or trying to reconstruct where the car went and when. But in theory it is certainly possible to design a system so that the local police, FBI, or Department of Homeland Security could do exactly that. Many Civil Libertarians fear that a GPS based mileage tax could end up being only an administration away from being designed that way.
2) Regular in car odometers with an "honor system"-
Although this system is generally favored by civil libertarians, it could make tampering or cheating on the mileage tax easier and more common, than with a GPS based system. And many proponents with a technocratic streak and little concern for privacy rights, dislike it for being scientifically less accurate even when drivers are fully honest. However this is the method favored by Sen. Barbara Boxer.
Basically this system would involve having the miles certified and billed either annually or whenever the car went in for repairs or an emissions test. Basically a technician or mechanic would check the odometer's mileage and examine the odometer for signs of tampering. At perhaps less frequent intervals the car would be examined for various indicators of wear and tear, to see if it more or less "jibes" with the odometer.
As it stands now odometer tampering is in fact a felony. Mostly because it is seen as a form of consumer fraud pertaining to the used car business. And already we have a situation where odometers are getting progressively more difficult to tamper with-at least without leaving some evidence of tampering in the device. Furthermore, there is a surprisingly sophisticated science of examining a car to see if the odometer reading appear to be accurately reflect the number of miles the car has driven.
Certainly the business of preventing odometer tampering would get much bigger if the crime was elevated from consumer fraud to tax evasion.
And of course, different variations on a mileage tax would depend on which method was adopted. Some proponents of the tax have suggested using "congestion pricing" or charging a higher fee when the car is driven in high traffic areas. This suggestion however would require the adoption of a GPS based system.
Furthermore if the mileage tax was collected by individual states it would have to involve either a GPS tracking system to determine if the car was driving in that particular state or not. Or it would require states to accept the fact if the driver paid for some miles either in the state where the car visited a mechanic or was registered, that it might not always reflect where the driving had actually taken place.
And if some states had a lower rate than others some people might try to find ways to take advantage of it. For example if the rate was higher in Oregon than California, a lot of Oregonians might decide to take the car into the shop during their vacation in Mt. Shasta (that is assuming you can pay in a mechanic shop in a state where the car is not registererd). Also dynamics could get interesting if you talk about a population known as "snowbirds". Or the rate might be lower in New Mexico, Colorado, or Utah than in either Arizona or Michigan. Then the snowbirds driving into Arizona for the winter could decide to get a tune up on their trip between Arizona and Michigan, so that the states where the snowbirds simply drive through get a more revenue than the place where they spend half the year.
In order to avoid such pitfalls an in car odometer based mileage tax would probably have to be national and would require some fair way to redistribute much of the money to individual states. Another arguement in favor of making it national is that people could more easily include the records of how much they already payed in mileage taxes with their Federal tax papers, and that considering mileage taxes part of a larger Federal formula could prevent regressive taxation.
Now that I've written this long post about how a mileage tax could be implemented, I'm sure some readers are wondering why a mileage tax might be implemented, as opposed to simply sticking with the gas tax.
For that you'll have to stay tune for future posts!! And
Say Goodnight Readers!!
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