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> Someone who has [...] a dramatically more fuel efficient vehicle is paying much less than you are. Isn't that a feature, not a bug? Don't we want to incenti

> Someone who has [...] a dramatically more fuel efficient vehicle is paying much less than you are. Isn't that a feature, not a bug? Don't we want to incentivize people to get more fuel efficient cars? I mean sure, if one day the majority of the cars are electric, we'll have to adjust how they are taxed, but for now why don't we leave the incentive for people that buy a fuel efficient or electric car.

Gibbon1 8y ago
When you dig deeper you find companies that manufacture vehicle tracking devices are behind these proposals. What they want is states to create a captive market for their tracking devices. I'm also suspicious that the oil industry is also behind this.
- beatgammit 8y ago
  We already have vehicle mileage tracking devices: odometers. Just have vehicles report their mileage each year when they renew their registration and base the registration tax on that and a multiplier based on vehicle type. To keep people honest, randomly inspect the VIN and mileage at renewal time with big fines for lying.
  - Gibbon1 8y ago
    Few years ago read a transportation studies guy that also mentioned that most people think their gas taxes pay for the roads. Really that only pays for a bit less than half. General taxes and bonds pay for much of it. My feeling is if you wanted to reduce the number of cars it would be better to just impose an excise tax on new car sales. Why tax gasoline over 15 years when you can get all the revenue up front via an excise tax. Assume 30mpg, expected life 200,000 miles, that's 6666 gallons of gasoline. At $0.7382/gallon that's $4920. Seriously why not just impose a $5000 excise tax and be done with it. https://frontiergroup.org/reports/fg/who-pays-roads https://frontiergroup.org/reports/fg/who-pays-roads On the other hand saw someone else mention their city used license plate readers to look at who was using their urban streets and turns out about 80% of the users weren't locals. That poses a big conundrum. Particularly in California where urban commercial property tax revenue is limited by Prop13. I think where I'm going with this is one shouldn't get too attached to the idea that things be 'fair' because that's simply impossible.

Gibbon1 8y ago

When you dig deeper you find companies that manufacture vehicle tracking devices are behind these proposals. What they want is states to create a captive market for their tracking devices. I'm also suspicious that the oil industry is also behind this.

beatgammit 8y ago
We already have vehicle mileage tracking devices: odometers. Just have vehicles report their mileage each year when they renew their registration and base the registration tax on that and a multiplier based on vehicle type. To keep people honest, randomly inspect the VIN and mileage at renewal time with big fines for lying.
- Gibbon1 8y ago
  Few years ago read a transportation studies guy that also mentioned that most people think their gas taxes pay for the roads. Really that only pays for a bit less than half. General taxes and bonds pay for much of it. My feeling is if you wanted to reduce the number of cars it would be better to just impose an excise tax on new car sales. Why tax gasoline over 15 years when you can get all the revenue up front via an excise tax. Assume 30mpg, expected life 200,000 miles, that's 6666 gallons of gasoline. At $0.7382/gallon that's $4920. Seriously why not just impose a $5000 excise tax and be done with it. https://frontiergroup.org/reports/fg/who-pays-roads https://frontiergroup.org/reports/fg/who-pays-roads On the other hand saw someone else mention their city used license plate readers to look at who was using their urban streets and turns out about 80% of the users weren't locals. That poses a big conundrum. Particularly in California where urban commercial property tax revenue is limited by Prop13. I think where I'm going with this is one shouldn't get too attached to the idea that things be 'fair' because that's simply impossible.