Coming soon to your neighborhood!!!

[rutrow]

upi.com/NewsTrack/view.php?StoryID=20060325-031322-1742r


Gas tax on miles, not gallons, tested

PORTLAND, Ore., March 25 (UPI) -- Oregon is testing the idea of collecting highway funds through a tax on miles driven, rather than gasoline consumed.

Eighty percent of Oregon's highway money comes from its 24-cents-per-gallon gas tax. If the state promotes reducing gasoline consumption and consumers tend to buy the fuel-efficient vehicles, including hybrids, highway revenues would take a hit, The New York Times reported.

The test program uses a global positioning system to track miles driven, using a black box to calculate how many miles are clocked in-state, out of state and during rush hour.

The experiment is designed to increase state revenue for road maintenance without raising gasoline taxes, but critics say collecting GPS records poses new privacy issues.

"The existence of such a database, which would, for the first time in history, allow for the creation of detailed daily itineraries of every driver, raises obvious privacy concerns," said David L. Sobel, general counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a civil liberties group in Washington.

© Copyright 2006 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved


Do we really have an oil shortage? If so, then why are people who are trying to do their part conserving oil being penalized for having a more efficient vehicle?

Or is it all about making more revenue and further intrusion into the lives of americans by attaching global positioning devices in their cars and monitoring their mileage?

What do ya'll think?

[All Seeing Eye]

They were talking about this two years ago. And the idea tanked then, and it should tank now. I don't see how they could sell this idea to make any sense whatsoever. There is no way I'll have a GPS on my car so they can track my movement. That's why I will never buy a vehicle with Onstar or LoJack.

Fuel efficient vehicles are fine. I drive a Lincoln Towncar because I'm old and stubborn (well, not that old...just cheap ), but the car fits me like a glove, and has over 250,000 miles on it. The gas mileage sucks but it gets me where I'm going and I'll never sell it. The car will have to fall apart on the side of the road before I get another one. ;O

[rutrow]

I agree with you ASE. One of my concerns is that ... what if it ever becomes [glow=red,2,300][/glow]required by the government in order to even be able to drive? How could we propose to stop the intrusion of yet another type of tax?

[Crimson]

Though it sucked serious monkey nads... SC had a system in place to raise that sort of money without having tacking devices and all that crap. A luxury tax is what they called it. Every year, based on your cars age and mileage, you payed a tax. On my 1992 Mitsubishi Eclipse with 78K miles it was like 65 dollars in 2000. In 2001 when I had my brand new truck it was.... 450 dollars on a brand new Sonoma with 5 miles on it. The next year when it had more miles on it the taxes dropped about one hundred dollars. This tax was included in your vehicle registration that you had to do every year. And, in some ways, it was kinda fair. The more expensive/newer the car the more the tax. Seemed to me like a 'tax the rich' thing which isn't done very often. The little guys, me and my broke friends, didn't have to pay as much.... but that's probably because they knew our cars were always broken down and we were walking everywhere.