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02/16/2005 Archived Entry: "Taxed by the mile"

Gordon P. writes, Proving once again that No Good Deed Goes Unpunished, State Governments across the country are responding to losses in revenue caused by improved automobile fuel economy by proposing to tax automobiles _by the mile_, in addition to taxing gasoline by the gallon......

According to a CBS piece, "Oregon has already started road testing the idea. 'Drivers will get charged for how many miles they use the roads, and it's as simple as that,' says engineer David Kim. Kim and his team at Oregon State University equipped a test car with a global positioning device to keep track of its mileage. Eventually, every car would need one."

The proposal to tax gasoline use by-the-mile not only punishes those who followed the government's earlier admonition to use less gas to free ourselves from terrorists/the-oil-Arabs e.g. by buying hybrid cars, it also establishes yet another layer of bureaucracy. Each car would have to be equipped with monitoring devices that would not only require installing and tracking but also repair. The data itself would have to collected and also monitored. Gordon adds a comment on the privacy implications, Note that some of the proposals include _mandating that a GPS system and computer be installed in every car, so that the movements of every car could be monitored and tracked by the state_...Welcome to the New U.S.A.: Universal Surveillance of America...

Additional complaints: the tax would fall most heavily upon those in rural areas who must drive (sometimes considerable distances) to obtain groceries and other necessities like employment. The tax may serve as a government assist to a private industry at the expense of the tax payer. That is, many people (Brad & I included) now favor travel by automobile rather than airplane because we object so strongly to the arilines' suspension of our civil liberties as the price of a ticket. The sheer expense of driving across country to see your folks at Christmas as opposed to flying there may mean that airlines benefit.

There seems to be no end to how deeply the government -- actually governments on local, state, and federal levels -- is willing to sink its hand into your pocket. It is a nickel-and-dime scheme but when you multiply those schemes by factors of 10, the public ends up in rags. Damn their bureaucratic souls to hell.