Fuel economy rant: IMO they're doing it wrong

[NutBucket]

That system would be ridiculous. It would add on another thing that we'd have to deal with. How would we report it? How would it be tracked? How would they prevent cheating? To actually make a system that would work it would cost a HUGE amount of money and it would be a headache for all of us. I'd much rather have the tax rolled into the cost of gas because then everything is easily dealt with and we don't need this huge organization to monitor our driving.

The last thing we need is another government organization that costs money to support. That would just end up taking more money out of all of our pockets.

In many states such a system is already in place. Mileage is recorded at annual inspections many states already require. It would only be a problem in states where there is no inspection or like in CA where there is no inspection for the first 6 years of new car ownership and only biennially thereafter.

 

[Bignate603]

In many states such a system is already in place. Mileage is recorded at annual inspections many states already require. It would only be a problem in states where there is no inspection or like in CA where there is no inspection for the first 6 years of new car ownership and only biennially thereafter.

There's two major problems with that.
1. They have no way to know where you did those miles based on where the car is registered. They could have been done anywhere in the country. The gas taxes wouldn't necessarily go towards the state or city/town where you did the miles.
2. Disconnecting your odometer is not difficult (at least on older cars, not sure about newer ones). Plenty of people would do that and scam the system.

The gas tax is tied to area where you're doing the driving and it's difficult to scam. It is a much better system.

 

[ilkhan]

Or a more out-of-the-box fix is to remove financing for cars (must pay in cash) and raise minimum car price to $50k.

Anybody proposing this would get shot, as would anybody who voted for it or supported it.

 

[z1ggy]

Yeah, the Gov't would be pretty dumb to do a miles driven tax. The gas tax is much easier for everybody. The only way I see that ever happening in the future is if they tracked the miles driven using GPS tracking . That raises a whole new issue though ( Big Bro is watching you, etc).

 

[NutBucket]

Don't think it can't happen in your lifetime z1ggy. Scary, but not impossible.