EDITORIAL: CBO’s toll-road fib--Vehicle-mile tax would hinder America’s greatest invention

While officially nonpartisan, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) occasionally lends its credibility to the most fashionable theories emanating from the left. The agency’s green eyeshades issued a report Wednesday that perpetuates one of Washington’s biggest lies: that drivers don’t pay enough in taxes. Bureaucrats and rent-seeking corporate allies have teamed up to advocate a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. They want continuous tracking of everyone’s driving so that every mile can be taxed.

The claim is that driver’s aren’t paying their fair share because the $35 billion collected in federal gasoline taxes doesn’t cover highway spending. Never mind that a sizable chunk of the Transportation Department’s “highway” funds is diverted into things like mass-transit programs and grants to local police departments to run speed traps. Anyone who owns an automobile knows there’s no end to the registration fees, personal property taxes, state gasoline taxes, inspection fees, parking tickets and other governmental levies on vehicle ownership.

“1) There are two many cars on the road at a given time (i.e., rush hour).

If you want to reduce that you need to reduce employment. People driving in rush hour are going to or from work. Taxes have no effect on this because the job pays for the transportation. The mileage tax doesn’t help here.

2) We are importing too much oil.

If the taxing is done per mile then it makes sense to buy the largest, least efficient truck you can get. This way you can deliver more per mile driven. The mileage tax is ineffective here.

3) We are not collecting enough revenue to fix and expand our roads.

There is no such thing as “enough revenue.” Every budget can be expanded by 10%, infinitely. The mileage tax is ineffective here because the goal is not attainable.

4) People are driving cars that are too big

As I mentioned above, the mileage tax would work to make this problem worse.

5) We are emitting too much carbon

The mileage tax would reward you for emitting megatons of carbon per mile driven, as long as you only drive that one mile. I heard the Shuttle crawler will be for sale soon... “

You would have to give me a detailed response just as I need to take a shower...but I’ll answer now anyway.

1) Rush hour: Yes...people’s work hours are generally determined by their employer...but there is some flexibility for many people. In my case, I can vary my official 8 to 5 schedule by at least 2 hours either way, and likely more if I ask. Beyond that I could work at home, deliveries can be done at night (already the case to a large extent in California), and lots of other options exist. But, yes, it will take require LARGE PENALTIES to get people to shift hours, but with a VMT, the sky is the limit. In California, on toll lanes on highway 91, they charge over a dollar per mile at peak rush hour. People will notice and adjust to fees that high.

2) “If the taxing is done per mile then it makes sense to buy the largest, least efficient truck you can get. This way you can deliver more per mile driven. The mileage tax is ineffective here.”

ONLY if it equally applied per vehicle. Once a transponder is embedded in your license plate, the type of vehicle you drive will be associated with it and the government can charge your F350 a lot more per mile than my Yugo, and I PROMISE, PROMISE, that they will do that...and it is already talked about in one of the articles that I read on this. With the old toll roads, with toll booths, that was next to impossible to do, until you got to the size of commercial trucks.

3) “There is no such thing as “enough revenue.” Every budget can be expanded by 10%, infinitely. The mileage tax is ineffective here because the goal is not attainable.” Don’t follow - but I think you’re saying that you can NEVER satisfy the government spending addicts - if so, I agree.

4) Covered above.

5) “The mileage tax would reward you for emitting megatons of carbon per mile driven, as long as you only drive that one mile. I heard the Shuttle crawler will be for sale soon...”

Pretty much the same as above. The VMT can WORK GREAT as a carbon tax, and even a cap and trade system. You can do things like even make the tax negative on that Yugo I mentioned above, so that so that some of the huge amount of per mile money the F350 driver has to pay actually goes to the Yugo driver to make driving even cheaper for him (in other words the Yugo guy gets money deposited into his checking account for each mile he drives...not a lot of money, but some money). I’m not saying it will be done that way, I’m saying that it CAN be done that way, and it can EASILY be done that way.

““1) There are two many cars on the road at a given time (i.e., rush hour).

Actually, just to add a bit to this. You are more right than wrong...which is why a VMT is so dangerous. Where I work, people drive 25 miles each way. In order to keep up with road costs, they need to pay 2 cents per mile (or 50 cents each way - at most). If they get charged 20 cents per mile, that’s $10 per day - THEY WILL PAY THAT, without much adjustment...so you have a point. Yet, at 20 cents per mile, government collects something like $500 Billion more per year - a HUGE TAX. But that is not even enough to really change habits (look at Europe, they drive like crazy, and they already pay the 20 cents plus per mile in gas tax). So, to really get my coworkers to change ‘habits’ they will need to be taxed closer to $1.00 per mile. At that point ($2,000) per month, other options kick in, such as moving closer to work, or telecommuting.

For the government, this tax is a GOLD MINE. Prepare to see it pushed really, really, hard soon.

“So the average driver, driving about 12000 miles a year gets a 12000 dollar tax hike added on top of his regular taxes(assuming a dollar a mile)......wow!

Of course look for this to be made progressive such as if you make under a certain amount you might pay only 10 per cent of what some “rich” person might have to pay!

I hope the Dem’s commit political suicide just proposing this notion in 2012. I think you’ll see the liberal states jump in by adding their own per mile tax scheme...I think Washington state is looking at such a notion but the issue is how do you charge out of state visitors!”

Interesting you look at it that way. What you describe in the first two paragraphs is EXACTLY how college tuition works...LOL. You have a super-high sticker price that only a tiny percentage of the public can afford - but then you lower it, as your customers throw away their privacy and open up their books to prove that they need ‘financial aid’ or subsidized loans.

In this case, while it is true that the sticker price could get as high as $1.00 per mile to drive (up from about 2 cents today), with discounts for those who deserve it (i.e., the poor and politicians), most likely they’d be happy with more like 30 cents, but without discounts (except for politicians, of course). The $1.00 per mile is only for a certain stretch of Highway 91, and only at a certain time...when huge numbers of people from LA are trying to leave town for the weekend.

http://www.tollroadsnews.com/node/3320

Even so, at 30 cents, you wind up charging roughly what the gas tax is in Europe...but much more intrusively.

As to the Dems killing themselves on this...unfortunately there’s just as much, if not more, interest by people who call themselves ‘Republicans’. They like the idea of what people tell them is ‘market pricing’ even if they cannot quite understand what that term means or how it applies here (hint, it doesn’t - the right term here is monopoly pricing). That’s one of the things that makes these schemes so dangerous...if the libs do push it, they will get A LOT of Republican support (just like Amnesty).

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