Taxing Drivers By The Mile 1760

Bob Ward

But what if you don't stop in that state for gas? I rarely gas up in Illinois when driving between Michigan and Wisconsin 'round the south- ern tip o' Lake Michigan (I already pay to drive on their tollways for all but three miles in Illinois, so why pay a gas tax on gasoline that's already not cheap and not drive on the local roads at all?!?).

In that scenario, would the Wisconsin or Michigan gasoline retalier have to forward a part of my gas tax back to Illinois? And what if I used the Illinois Tollway System for all but three miles through that state? Is the GPS smart enough to know not to "tax" me for those miles, so that I only get hit up for three instead of 80 miles? Or do all toll roads go away under this GPS pricing scheme? If not, and when the toll roads get ALL the revenue from your trips along them and the state gets NONE of the gas tax dollars they used to get when they triple-taxed you, how to you make up for that loss of funding? Raise the taxes even more? Any drivers who regularly use toll roads are already getting hit up by state and local gasoline taxes as well as having to pay the tolls, so I'd think the states with toll road facil- ities would not like this proposal, as the ability to credit the toll roads directly (and cutting out the triple-taxation) would sbe right there and easy to implement...

states and provinces would simultaneously adopt this new high-tech solution to a low-tech problem. If Washington DIDN'T implement such a system after Oregon did, anyone near the border or regularly travel- ing across it would then be incentivized to simply top off in Oregon (no sales tax on the actual gasoline anymore) and do as much of their driving on the Washington side as possible (no "per mile" taxing there). Sounds like a problem.

Plus, as I alluded to in the above paragraph, why implement such a costly, high-tech solution (which won't work all the time -- trees and tall buildings as well as well-placed tinfoil can easily block GPS signals) when you have the perfect low-tech solution sitting there staring you right in the face today -- and it's already implemented! Just index the gasoline tax to inflation and make it a percentage of the cost of the gasoline and you've solved most of the problem using an already-existing system. Then, if you need to account for the growth in use of hybrids, index the gasoline tax to the sale and use of hybrids -- the more hybrids on the roads, the higher the gasoline tax goes. The hybrid owners don't notice the difference, as they're paying about the same price total while the gas-guzzling car owners have a greater incentive to either get rid of the guzzler and buy a more fuel-efficient car or just put-up-and-shut-up and pay the higher cost and enjoy their guzzler. It's not perfect, but you don't need to rely on technology that can fail or, in the case of GPS, be turned off or degraded at a moment's notice by the government in the name of "combating terrorism."

Later, Chris

-- Chris Bessert