7 ms·

A black box in your car? Some see a source of tax revenue

17 points by eplanit 13y ago

kunai 13y ago
The TRON-ripoff logo isn't helping at all.
RexRollman 13y ago
I really don't see how this would work. Just because I put a certain number of miles on my vehicle, it doesn't mean they were accumulated in my home state. That would end up being a tax for out of state travel.
PeterisP 13y ago
Why is raising the gas tax not an option? I mean, almost noone wants to pay more taxes, but if the road fund needs to take money then it's far simpler to raise the existing tax rate rather than implement a new process, collection agency, and monitoring tools. The rate listed in article (18 cents/gallon) is not a big influence to prevent driving - it's ten times less than the gas excise tax I pay in EU, which comes out to a bit less than $2 per US gallon. Business doesn't stop because of it, and there's extra motivation to reduce the polluting transportation.
- Zak 13y ago
  Last time I checked the figures, at a Federal level at least, fuel taxes did cover the costs of maintaining the highway system. If the highway system needs more maintenance, increasing the fuel tax by a relatively small amount would likely cover it. I'm generally not one to argue in favor of taxation, but fuel taxes are essentially user fees for the road system. Unless and until most cars use something as an energy source that's hard to tax in this way, it's a viable, and mostly fair way to pay for roads. There's even a significant correlation between a vehicle's fuel economy and how much damage it does to the road, as both are closely related to weight.
  - walshemj 13y ago
    You realize the hypothecation is a bad thing and has some serious downsides
    - Zak 13y ago
      You realize the hypothecation is a bad thing No, I don't. That strikes me as an opinion that's honestly debatable and strongly influenced by one's value system, especially with regard to what roles a government should and should not play in a society rather than an objective fact. That said, I wasn't necessarily arguing that fuel taxes should only be used to pay for roads nor that roads should only be paid for using fuel taxes. Several people quoted in the article do make claims that are more or less equivalent to "driving should be taxed enough to pay for the roads" then go on to claim that mileage-based rather than fuel-based taxes are a better way to do so. I'm saying that claim is dubious.
      - walshemj 13y ago
        Well the argument goes why as a single person should my taxes go to support your kids also it makes supporting the less popular elements of government spending harder.
        Zak 13y ago
        Slippery slope. Assuming, for the moment that it is a good idea to fund the highway system primarily or exclusively with taxes that approximate user fees, that does not imply that it necessarily makes sense to pay for education the same way. Nearly everyone who derives benefit from the highway system, directly or indirectly helps pay the tax, directly or indirectly. Higher fuel taxes would translate directly to higher prices for goods and services that use the highway system. Other things supported by taxation may be different - education, for example. There's reason to believe that having a well educated population is good for everyone who lives in the society, even people who are not, at that time receiving education. User fees are contrary to the goal of educating as many people to a certain level as possible, so a different model probably works better. it makes supporting the less popular elements of government spending harder Well, in a government that's more or less democratic, implementing less popular policies should be harder than implementing popular ones. That's kind of the point.
- protomyth 13y ago
  I agree on raising the gas tax. They also need to start thinking about the gas tax equivalent for electric vehicles. A pay once a year (or even monthly) mileage tax is extremely punitive on poor folks. The tax at the pump works the same way as withholding for income taxes. It allows management in chunks of a tax the can get very high.
- 100k 13y ago
  Agreed. This is a solution to a non-problem. The usual argument is that with electrics and hybrids, tax revenue is going down. OK, fine, raise the rate! Plenty of people are still driving internal combustion vehicles. Higher rates will spur adoption of more efficient vehicles, which is a good thing. If we really want to charge by the mile, add an odometer reading to the smog check. There's no need for a complicated and privacy-invasive system to check how many miles you drive.
  - greenyoda 13y ago
    "The usual argument is that with electrics and hybrids, tax revenue is going down." Electricity is also taxed quite heavily, so you aren't going to avoid all taxes by driving an electric or hybrid car.
- TwiztidK 13y ago
  I believe part of the issue is that as hybrids and electric vehicles become more popular, they won't be contributing anything for their road use so we do need to seek alternative means of taxing vehicles. I think the simplest method would be to implement some system of yearly odometer reading as it's low-tech, low-cost, and non-invasive.
  - jws 13y ago
    The wear caused on a road surface is a higher-than-linear function of axle loading. The standard model has a power of 4. Double the mass, 16 times the wear. Very light vehicles, like EVs, don't significantly wear the roads compared to large cars, pickups, and especially commercial trucks. Consider, (damage is normalized to a Ford F-150). Weight Damage Gallons/mile Honda Civic 2815 0.05 0.032 Toyota Prius 2921 0.05 0.020 Nissan Leaf 3291 0.09 Ford Transit Connect (me) 3500 0.11 0.50 Tesla Model S 4647 0.35 Ford F-150 Pickup 6000 1.0 0.059 Ford Excursion Diesel (bro) 7725 2.75 0.055 Maximum Loaded Truck 20000/axle 1970. (+other axles) 0.2 The Leaf does so little damage that we can ignore it. A Honda Civic weighs even less, but will be paying something like half what a pickup does for 1/20th of the damage. My brother's Excursion is doing about 25 times the road damage as my Connect, but we pay essentially the same gas tax. A truck with a maximally loaded axle is doing almost 2000 times the damage, for about 4 times the fuel tax. Clearly, fuel use as a proxy for road damage is flawed, but not because the light vehicles are getting away, more because the heavy vehicles are under paying. That exponent of four gets big in a hurry. I propose: Assess road expenses into wear based maintenance, and all other costs. Then each vehicle pays based on their mileage and "wear factor" for wear based maintenance and just their mileage for the rest of the costs. The black boxes are needed in the US because our roads are paid for locally, you have to break out the payments to the right parties. It's not like we aren't tracked everywhere we go anyway. Keep the fuel tax as a carbon tax, import/trade balance deterrent, revenue source. Edit: That proposal is going to need a rural subsidy, and possibly a freezing climate subsidy as well. By then it will get political and we'll probably end up with a tax on paint color by the time it is done.
- jws 13y ago
  Time and position based taxation could separate maintenance costs from "increased capacity" costs. If you tax peak drive time traffic higher, you could shift people to other patterns and not require more lanes to be added to urban highways. This can't be accomplished with a gas tax. (I used to never leave work between 4pm and 6:30pm to avoid my congested outer loop, I could have avoided tax on the unending parade of new lanes added over the past decade. If more people had joined me we could have saved quite a bit in construction costs.) Gas consumption and road wear is at least correlated in the right direction, typically, but you could also do a more accurate job of accurately taxing for road wear by combining vehicle type, road type, and mileage.
- chiph 13y ago
  With the new CAFE mileage goals, tax revenue will fall as cars become more fuel efficient. Or as people buy more electric vehicles. The deal is that cars actually cause very little damage to the roads. Trucks are the real cause of road damage -- up to 80,000 pounds spread over five axles. Compare that to 4,000 pounds over two axles for a car (or 5-6k pounds for a loaded pickup or SUV) -- the per-axle weight is much higher for a truck. The trucking lobby is very powerful in Washington, and will resist any effort to increase the diesel motor-fuels tax. They have a powerful argument in their favor: The majority of food in America is delivered by truck. Raise the tax, raise the cost of food. But even outside of that, there's a simple way to get about a 20% increase in funds for repairing the roads & bridges, and that's to stop the diversion of funds out of the highway trust fund into the general fund. The tax money intended to go to build & maintain our crumbling transportation infrastructure, is instead being fed into the sausage factory where it gets turned into pork.
  - PeterisP 13y ago
    The valid argument for not taxing a flat rate ($xxx per car per year) is that it unfairly penalizes those who use it very little. For personal vehicles that makes sense, so their 'costs' are mostly paid by the gas excise; but for commercial trucks you can just tax them directly - for example, here local semi-trailers pay ~$350 annual vehicle tax; does USA have something like this? The food argument is bullshit, of course, but probably effective because it sounds nice. The truck fuel cost is a very tiny part of the actual food cost - taxes on farming fuel would impact food, but not that. Of course, extra taxes always create inflation; but fuel tax is probably the one most evenly spread across everything, as it affects burger prices just the same as Barbie prices.
    - chiph 13y ago
      The federal diesel motor fuels tax is 28¢ per gallon. The states will have their own tax as well. Texas imposes a 20¢ per gallon tax. Connecticut's is 54.9¢. There's also a tax on the vehicle itself. I want to say that it's in the $500 per year range, depending on it's GVWR and the state.
  - msandford 13y ago
- Tiktaalik 13y ago
  Electric cars degrade the road at the same rate as gasoline cars and we'll need to keep the funding for road maintenance at the same level as more and more people move to electric cars.
  - protomyth 13y ago
    Then make it very simple for adoption, tax the electricity like we tax gas. Do not come up with some new system just figure out the rough equivalent and put a tax on it.
- michaelt 13y ago
  Why is raising the gas tax not an option? It is an option. You are currently witnessing an attempt to move the Overton Window [1] from "should we or should we not raise the gas tax" to "should we raise the gas tax or should we add a mileage tax with big brother tracking". Later legislators will tell us they've listened to us, and they're going to raise the gas tax instead of instituting a mileage tax. There will be much rejoicing. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
scragg 13y ago
Moronic. So to create tax revenue, let's spend tax revenue on a device, data collection, analysis, complex billing, which of course the gov having a great history of being good stewards with our tax dollars, will overpay. All for something that can double as a spying device. yay. Just raise the gas tax to make up for lost revenue. Sick of hearing "we are addicted to oil" every state of the union and the answer is right there. Solves the road revenue problem as well.
dlgeek 13y ago
And we have to use complicated tracking/transmitting devices that force us to trust us that you're not monitoring our movements instead of just having our odometers read annually (perhaps during emissions testing?)...why?
djillionsmix 13y ago
Four or five times a year someone floats this eternally stupid idea for the Exciting New Car Tax!!! and the answer to why the hell people would ever accept this, but not a gas tax increase, is always mumble mumble mumble "hey, look over there!"
cschmidt 13y ago
Oregon is doing exactly this, apparently. The Economist had an interesting article on it recently. http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21588097-oregon-wants-tax-motorists-miles-driven-not-petrol-burned-will-it-work-roads-less http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21588097-oregon-... It does seem like raising the gas tax would be an easier option.
awjr 13y ago
As others have said in this thread, just raise taxation on fuel. In the UK ($8.50 per US gallon) it has encouraged people towards more efficient vehicles and the government has made electric vehicles free from yearly charges (Vehicle Excise Duty is based on emissions which again punish bigger engined cars). Of note it is quite unusual to see an 18 year old with a car these days. Cost of fuel and insurance discourages the young from getting a car. In fact there is a major push towards 'Active travel' (Cycling/walking/public transport). Where I can see these type of devices finding a home is in reducing your insurance premiums. In fact I can see the Russian situation where something like this box with a dashboard cam will almost become mandatory. Well not so much mandatory, but as the only way to get cheap insurance.
- maxsilver 13y ago
  > As others have said in this thread, just raise taxation on fuel. This is one of those "uniquely American" problems. You simply can't get any meaningfully-large group of US citizens to agree to raise taxes. On anything. Even if it's in their own interest. Even if there is zero drawbacks of any kind. Americans will fight tooth-and-nail against anything that looks or feels like a "tax" of any kind. In addition, many Americans already feel like the gasoline prices are "high" here. (Even though, factually, we live with very low subsidized prices: they're around $3.25 per US gallon here today). Raising tax on fuel is not even fathomable.
  - binarycrusader 13y ago
    You simply can't get any meaningfully-large group of US citizens to agree to raise taxes. On anything. Really? http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/08/us/politics/in-california-voters-approve-ballot-measure-that-raises-taxesin-california-approve-voters-ballot-measure-that-raises-taxes.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/08/us/politics/in-california-... I was one of the voters that voted for the increase. I don't mind paying taxes most of the time; with them I buy civilization.
    - maxsilver 13y ago
      Your right. I should have started all of the above sentences with "most of the time".
ISL 13y ago
A tire tax might be simpler to implement, and would capture similar information.
- protomyth 13y ago
  A tire tax is a really bad idea from a safety point of view. People will delay tire purchases past the safety line.
  - toomuchtodo 13y ago
    A flat yearly tax on the vehicle.
    - waterlesscloud 13y ago
      You could call it a vehicle registration fee.
      - protomyth 13y ago
        If your vehicle registration fee was in the several thousand dollar range, it would cripple a goodly number of poor and low income folks.
        toomuchtodo 13y ago
        They're already paying the taxes; its just streamlining the collection. If they're crippled by current fuel taxes, they'd still be crippled (or rather, unable to afford) taxes under the proposed scheme as well. See my post where I outline the math: https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=6623693 https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=6623693
        protomyth 13y ago
        No, it is easier for people to pay small chunks at different times then to be confronted by one huge bill. Planning is not something innate in people. This is the exact reason withholdings were created. Number 2, the cost addition to government budget should be unacceptable and the cost of this program will increase the tax beyond what is needed.
Freeboots 13y ago
lol americas stupid-low petrol prices catch up with them faster than expected. This seems like a crazy attempt to use tech to confuse people and trick them into paying higher tax. Tax which could/should come by the far more simple means of fuel tax. They should just suck it up and give their constituents some tough love.
tomohawk 13y ago
At least in the state I live in, the gas tax would more than pay for road upkeep and upgrades, but they keep diverting the money to other uses (usually ending up in the pockets of politically connected cronies). We now have bridges in need of replacement and roads falling apart. It's no surprise that, having found a great gimmick to divert money, while at the same time making it seem like the money is actually needed, that politicians want to see how far they can push it.
yetanotherphd 13y ago
People need to get out of the false notion that the government is desperate to increase tax revenue by any means, and will foist us with an extra tax at every opportunity. There are two main drivers of tax policy. The bad, is that there is political gain to be made by making taxes less salient. If people don't notice they are being taxed, they will complain less. The article claims gasoline taxes are more salient than the proposed new technlology. The good, is that the government wants to tax negative externalities, and give tax breaks for positive externalities, and possibly tax luxury items to make taxes more progressive (the last one isn't always good policy). The proposed policy may or may not achieve this - as mentioned, it does allow for congestion taxation. So whether you are saying what the government should do, or what the government does do, the paradigm of a government desperate to obtain more revenue is a poor one.
- MichaelGG 13y ago
  Local governments are notorious for trying to increase revenue. Like changing yellow-light duration to increase red-light traffic violation tickets after cameras were installed. Governments in general, at a federal level, might not be this way, but local cities and counties certainly often try many tricks. From "taxes" on driving, to abusing seizure laws. Hence the notion people have.
  - yetanotherphd 13y ago
    Yeah good point. I guess for various reasons higher levels of government tend to reign in the ability of lower levels of government to raise taxes, and it does create precisely the situation you describe. Still, all the more reason to make fine distinctions - in this case between local state and federal government
lbcadden3 13y ago
I haven't read it yet. So they are going to get rid of the fuel tax right?
mieses 13y ago
This sentence discredits the writer: "Libertarians have joined environmental groups in lobbying to allow government to use the little boxes to keep track of the miles you drive, and possibly where you drive them — then use the information to draw up a tax bill." Libertarians are for use tax and privatization of roads. Unless misled by clever wording, they would never support a state administered use tax that tracked your location.

17 points by eplanit 13y ago

kunai 13y ago

The TRON-ripoff logo isn't helping at all.

I really don't see how this would work. Just because I put a certain number of miles on my vehicle, it doesn't mean they were accumulated in my home state. That would end up being a tax for out of state travel.

PeterisP 13y ago

Why is raising the gas tax not an option? I mean, almost noone wants to pay more taxes, but if the road fund needs to take money then it's far simpler to raise the existing tax rate rather than implement a new process, collection agency, and monitoring tools. The rate listed in article (18 cents/gallon) is not a big influence to prevent driving - it's ten times less than the gas excise tax I pay in EU, which comes out to a bit less than $2 per US gallon. Business doesn't stop because of it, and there's extra motivation to reduce the polluting transportation.

Zak 13y ago
Last time I checked the figures, at a Federal level at least, fuel taxes did cover the costs of maintaining the highway system. If the highway system needs more maintenance, increasing the fuel tax by a relatively small amount would likely cover it. I'm generally not one to argue in favor of taxation, but fuel taxes are essentially user fees for the road system. Unless and until most cars use something as an energy source that's hard to tax in this way, it's a viable, and mostly fair way to pay for roads. There's even a significant correlation between a vehicle's fuel economy and how much damage it does to the road, as both are closely related to weight.
- walshemj 13y ago
  You realize the hypothecation is a bad thing and has some serious downsides
  - Zak 13y ago
    You realize the hypothecation is a bad thing No, I don't. That strikes me as an opinion that's honestly debatable and strongly influenced by one's value system, especially with regard to what roles a government should and should not play in a society rather than an objective fact. That said, I wasn't necessarily arguing that fuel taxes should only be used to pay for roads nor that roads should only be paid for using fuel taxes. Several people quoted in the article do make claims that are more or less equivalent to "driving should be taxed enough to pay for the roads" then go on to claim that mileage-based rather than fuel-based taxes are a better way to do so. I'm saying that claim is dubious.
    - walshemj 13y ago
      Well the argument goes why as a single person should my taxes go to support your kids also it makes supporting the less popular elements of government spending harder.
      - Zak 13y ago
        Slippery slope. Assuming, for the moment that it is a good idea to fund the highway system primarily or exclusively with taxes that approximate user fees, that does not imply that it necessarily makes sense to pay for education the same way. Nearly everyone who derives benefit from the highway system, directly or indirectly helps pay the tax, directly or indirectly. Higher fuel taxes would translate directly to higher prices for goods and services that use the highway system. Other things supported by taxation may be different - education, for example. There's reason to believe that having a well educated population is good for everyone who lives in the society, even people who are not, at that time receiving education. User fees are contrary to the goal of educating as many people to a certain level as possible, so a different model probably works better. it makes supporting the less popular elements of government spending harder Well, in a government that's more or less democratic, implementing less popular policies should be harder than implementing popular ones. That's kind of the point.
protomyth 13y ago
I agree on raising the gas tax. They also need to start thinking about the gas tax equivalent for electric vehicles. A pay once a year (or even monthly) mileage tax is extremely punitive on poor folks. The tax at the pump works the same way as withholding for income taxes. It allows management in chunks of a tax the can get very high.
100k 13y ago
Agreed. This is a solution to a non-problem. The usual argument is that with electrics and hybrids, tax revenue is going down. OK, fine, raise the rate! Plenty of people are still driving internal combustion vehicles. Higher rates will spur adoption of more efficient vehicles, which is a good thing. If we really want to charge by the mile, add an odometer reading to the smog check. There's no need for a complicated and privacy-invasive system to check how many miles you drive.
- greenyoda 13y ago
  "The usual argument is that with electrics and hybrids, tax revenue is going down." Electricity is also taxed quite heavily, so you aren't going to avoid all taxes by driving an electric or hybrid car.
TwiztidK 13y ago
I believe part of the issue is that as hybrids and electric vehicles become more popular, they won't be contributing anything for their road use so we do need to seek alternative means of taxing vehicles. I think the simplest method would be to implement some system of yearly odometer reading as it's low-tech, low-cost, and non-invasive.
- jws 13y ago
  The wear caused on a road surface is a higher-than-linear function of axle loading. The standard model has a power of 4. Double the mass, 16 times the wear. Very light vehicles, like EVs, don't significantly wear the roads compared to large cars, pickups, and especially commercial trucks. Consider, (damage is normalized to a Ford F-150). Weight Damage Gallons/mile Honda Civic 2815 0.05 0.032 Toyota Prius 2921 0.05 0.020 Nissan Leaf 3291 0.09 Ford Transit Connect (me) 3500 0.11 0.50 Tesla Model S 4647 0.35 Ford F-150 Pickup 6000 1.0 0.059 Ford Excursion Diesel (bro) 7725 2.75 0.055 Maximum Loaded Truck 20000/axle 1970. (+other axles) 0.2 The Leaf does so little damage that we can ignore it. A Honda Civic weighs even less, but will be paying something like half what a pickup does for 1/20th of the damage. My brother's Excursion is doing about 25 times the road damage as my Connect, but we pay essentially the same gas tax. A truck with a maximally loaded axle is doing almost 2000 times the damage, for about 4 times the fuel tax. Clearly, fuel use as a proxy for road damage is flawed, but not because the light vehicles are getting away, more because the heavy vehicles are under paying. That exponent of four gets big in a hurry. I propose: Assess road expenses into wear based maintenance, and all other costs. Then each vehicle pays based on their mileage and "wear factor" for wear based maintenance and just their mileage for the rest of the costs. The black boxes are needed in the US because our roads are paid for locally, you have to break out the payments to the right parties. It's not like we aren't tracked everywhere we go anyway. Keep the fuel tax as a carbon tax, import/trade balance deterrent, revenue source. Edit: That proposal is going to need a rural subsidy, and possibly a freezing climate subsidy as well. By then it will get political and we'll probably end up with a tax on paint color by the time it is done.
jws 13y ago
Time and position based taxation could separate maintenance costs from "increased capacity" costs. If you tax peak drive time traffic higher, you could shift people to other patterns and not require more lanes to be added to urban highways. This can't be accomplished with a gas tax. (I used to never leave work between 4pm and 6:30pm to avoid my congested outer loop, I could have avoided tax on the unending parade of new lanes added over the past decade. If more people had joined me we could have saved quite a bit in construction costs.) Gas consumption and road wear is at least correlated in the right direction, typically, but you could also do a more accurate job of accurately taxing for road wear by combining vehicle type, road type, and mileage.
chiph 13y ago
With the new CAFE mileage goals, tax revenue will fall as cars become more fuel efficient. Or as people buy more electric vehicles. The deal is that cars actually cause very little damage to the roads. Trucks are the real cause of road damage -- up to 80,000 pounds spread over five axles. Compare that to 4,000 pounds over two axles for a car (or 5-6k pounds for a loaded pickup or SUV) -- the per-axle weight is much higher for a truck. The trucking lobby is very powerful in Washington, and will resist any effort to increase the diesel motor-fuels tax. They have a powerful argument in their favor: The majority of food in America is delivered by truck. Raise the tax, raise the cost of food. But even outside of that, there's a simple way to get about a 20% increase in funds for repairing the roads & bridges, and that's to stop the diversion of funds out of the highway trust fund into the general fund. The tax money intended to go to build & maintain our crumbling transportation infrastructure, is instead being fed into the sausage factory where it gets turned into pork.
- PeterisP 13y ago
  The valid argument for not taxing a flat rate ($xxx per car per year) is that it unfairly penalizes those who use it very little. For personal vehicles that makes sense, so their 'costs' are mostly paid by the gas excise; but for commercial trucks you can just tax them directly - for example, here local semi-trailers pay ~$350 annual vehicle tax; does USA have something like this? The food argument is bullshit, of course, but probably effective because it sounds nice. The truck fuel cost is a very tiny part of the actual food cost - taxes on farming fuel would impact food, but not that. Of course, extra taxes always create inflation; but fuel tax is probably the one most evenly spread across everything, as it affects burger prices just the same as Barbie prices.
  - chiph 13y ago
    The federal diesel motor fuels tax is 28¢ per gallon. The states will have their own tax as well. Texas imposes a 20¢ per gallon tax. Connecticut's is 54.9¢. There's also a tax on the vehicle itself. I want to say that it's in the $500 per year range, depending on it's GVWR and the state.
- msandford 13y ago
Tiktaalik 13y ago
Electric cars degrade the road at the same rate as gasoline cars and we'll need to keep the funding for road maintenance at the same level as more and more people move to electric cars.
- protomyth 13y ago
  Then make it very simple for adoption, tax the electricity like we tax gas. Do not come up with some new system just figure out the rough equivalent and put a tax on it.
michaelt 13y ago
Why is raising the gas tax not an option? It is an option. You are currently witnessing an attempt to move the Overton Window [1] from "should we or should we not raise the gas tax" to "should we raise the gas tax or should we add a mileage tax with big brother tracking". Later legislators will tell us they've listened to us, and they're going to raise the gas tax instead of instituting a mileage tax. There will be much rejoicing. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

scragg 13y ago

Moronic. So to create tax revenue, let's spend tax revenue on a device, data collection, analysis, complex billing, which of course the gov having a great history of being good stewards with our tax dollars, will overpay. All for something that can double as a spying device. yay. Just raise the gas tax to make up for lost revenue. Sick of hearing "we are addicted to oil" every state of the union and the answer is right there. Solves the road revenue problem as well.

dlgeek 13y ago

And we have to use complicated tracking/transmitting devices that force us to trust us that you're not monitoring our movements instead of just having our odometers read annually (perhaps during emissions testing?)...why?

djillionsmix 13y ago

Four or five times a year someone floats this eternally stupid idea for the Exciting New Car Tax!!! and the answer to why the hell people would ever accept this, but not a gas tax increase, is always mumble mumble mumble "hey, look over there!"

cschmidt 13y ago

Oregon is doing exactly this, apparently. The Economist had an interesting article on it recently. http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21588097-oregon-wants-tax-motorists-miles-driven-not-petrol-burned-will-it-work-roads-less http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21588097-oregon-... It does seem like raising the gas tax would be an easier option.

awjr 13y ago

As others have said in this thread, just raise taxation on fuel. In the UK ($8.50 per US gallon) it has encouraged people towards more efficient vehicles and the government has made electric vehicles free from yearly charges (Vehicle Excise Duty is based on emissions which again punish bigger engined cars). Of note it is quite unusual to see an 18 year old with a car these days. Cost of fuel and insurance discourages the young from getting a car. In fact there is a major push towards 'Active travel' (Cycling/walking/public transport). Where I can see these type of devices finding a home is in reducing your insurance premiums. In fact I can see the Russian situation where something like this box with a dashboard cam will almost become mandatory. Well not so much mandatory, but as the only way to get cheap insurance.

maxsilver 13y ago
> As others have said in this thread, just raise taxation on fuel. This is one of those "uniquely American" problems. You simply can't get any meaningfully-large group of US citizens to agree to raise taxes. On anything. Even if it's in their own interest. Even if there is zero drawbacks of any kind. Americans will fight tooth-and-nail against anything that looks or feels like a "tax" of any kind. In addition, many Americans already feel like the gasoline prices are "high" here. (Even though, factually, we live with very low subsidized prices: they're around $3.25 per US gallon here today). Raising tax on fuel is not even fathomable.
- binarycrusader 13y ago
  You simply can't get any meaningfully-large group of US citizens to agree to raise taxes. On anything. Really? http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/08/us/politics/in-california-voters-approve-ballot-measure-that-raises-taxesin-california-approve-voters-ballot-measure-that-raises-taxes.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/08/us/politics/in-california-... I was one of the voters that voted for the increase. I don't mind paying taxes most of the time; with them I buy civilization.
  - maxsilver 13y ago
    Your right. I should have started all of the above sentences with "most of the time".

ISL 13y ago

A tire tax might be simpler to implement, and would capture similar information.

protomyth 13y ago
A tire tax is a really bad idea from a safety point of view. People will delay tire purchases past the safety line.
- toomuchtodo 13y ago
  A flat yearly tax on the vehicle.
  - waterlesscloud 13y ago
    You could call it a vehicle registration fee.
    - protomyth 13y ago
      If your vehicle registration fee was in the several thousand dollar range, it would cripple a goodly number of poor and low income folks.
      - toomuchtodo 13y ago
        They're already paying the taxes; its just streamlining the collection. If they're crippled by current fuel taxes, they'd still be crippled (or rather, unable to afford) taxes under the proposed scheme as well. See my post where I outline the math: https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=6623693 https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=6623693
        protomyth 13y ago
        No, it is easier for people to pay small chunks at different times then to be confronted by one huge bill. Planning is not something innate in people. This is the exact reason withholdings were created. Number 2, the cost addition to government budget should be unacceptable and the cost of this program will increase the tax beyond what is needed.

Freeboots 13y ago

lol americas stupid-low petrol prices catch up with them faster than expected. This seems like a crazy attempt to use tech to confuse people and trick them into paying higher tax. Tax which could/should come by the far more simple means of fuel tax. They should just suck it up and give their constituents some tough love.

tomohawk 13y ago

At least in the state I live in, the gas tax would more than pay for road upkeep and upgrades, but they keep diverting the money to other uses (usually ending up in the pockets of politically connected cronies). We now have bridges in need of replacement and roads falling apart. It's no surprise that, having found a great gimmick to divert money, while at the same time making it seem like the money is actually needed, that politicians want to see how far they can push it.

yetanotherphd 13y ago

People need to get out of the false notion that the government is desperate to increase tax revenue by any means, and will foist us with an extra tax at every opportunity. There are two main drivers of tax policy. The bad, is that there is political gain to be made by making taxes less salient. If people don't notice they are being taxed, they will complain less. The article claims gasoline taxes are more salient than the proposed new technlology. The good, is that the government wants to tax negative externalities, and give tax breaks for positive externalities, and possibly tax luxury items to make taxes more progressive (the last one isn't always good policy). The proposed policy may or may not achieve this - as mentioned, it does allow for congestion taxation. So whether you are saying what the government should do, or what the government does do, the paradigm of a government desperate to obtain more revenue is a poor one.

MichaelGG 13y ago
Local governments are notorious for trying to increase revenue. Like changing yellow-light duration to increase red-light traffic violation tickets after cameras were installed. Governments in general, at a federal level, might not be this way, but local cities and counties certainly often try many tricks. From "taxes" on driving, to abusing seizure laws. Hence the notion people have.
- yetanotherphd 13y ago
  Yeah good point. I guess for various reasons higher levels of government tend to reign in the ability of lower levels of government to raise taxes, and it does create precisely the situation you describe. Still, all the more reason to make fine distinctions - in this case between local state and federal government

lbcadden3 13y ago

I haven't read it yet. So they are going to get rid of the fuel tax right?

mieses 13y ago

This sentence discredits the writer: "Libertarians have joined environmental groups in lobbying to allow government to use the little boxes to keep track of the miles you drive, and possibly where you drive them — then use the information to draw up a tax bill." Libertarians are for use tax and privatization of roads. Unless misled by clever wording, they would never support a state administered use tax that tracked your location.