California Needs Volunteers To Test Road Charge

[bing101]

http://www.capradio.org/articles/2015/04/23/california-needs-volunteers-to-test-road-charge/ 
This is the pay per miles driven model that the state of California is doing to improve road funding.

[roadfro]

"Vehicle Miles Traveled" (VMT) taxes are being talked about quite a bit as one possible replacement to the gas tax. I recall Nevada was looking at doing a similar pilot study a couple years ago, but never heard much more about it.

VMT would be a more equitable solution for funding roads, but comes with its own set of challenges. How do you collect mileage to determine the tax? An odometer reading is easy, but can be manipulated. GPS tracking is an option, but that has obvious privacy issues. And then there's the reconciliation of multiple taxes currently built into the gas tax... If I drive my car Nevada-registered car from Reno to San Francisco for a 2-week vacation, do I get taxed at the Reno, Washoe County, and Nevada rates for all the driving I did in San Francisco (where I would normally have made some road tax contribution through a gas tax)? What about all the cities/counties I drove through along the way?

There is no easy solution to the gas tax. The only easy answer is that the status quo is not sustainable.

[bing101]

Wait Doesn't Fastrak in Some states or EZ-Pass in other places do similar things where they track miles traveled on a Toll Freeway.

Maybe this could be a case that Fastrak must be used on all freeways?
Also In the Bay area tolls were confined to cover the cost of driving on a bridge.

[jeffandnicole]

Maybe this could be a case that Fastrak must be used on all freeways?

How do you enforce that?   And since the VMT is to calculate your mileage on *all* roads, it's not a freeway issue.

[3467]

We were told to save gas and cut GHGS and now this is thing is being pushed from both. It has come up in Illinois funding too. No and hell no to the NSA tax

[SP Cook]

Anybody that does not understand that a per-mile tax will be a tax increase, probably because it will be IN ADDITION TO current fuel taxes and tolls, has not been paying attention.

And while it is currently illegal to do so already, the incentive to register in some low tax state gets multipled 10000 fold under such a system.  Today, you are just avoide wing registration fees and maybe some property taxes.  Under a per-mile tax, there will always be some state willing to go very low.  Out of state registration laws are hard to enforce, especially in big cities, resort areas, and near state lines.  And who is to say that UPS or such wouldn't register all its trucks in the lowest tax state?

[Pete from Boston]

Anybody that does not understand that a per-mile tax will be a tax increase, probably because it will be IN ADDITION TO current fuel taxes and tolls, has not been paying attention.

And while it is currently illegal to do so already, the incentive to register in some low tax state gets multipled 10000 fold under such a system.  Today, you are just avoide wing registration fees and maybe some property taxes.  Under a per-mile tax, there will always be some state willing to go very low.  Out of state registration laws are hard to enforce, especially in big cities, resort areas, and near state lines.  And who is to say that UPS or such wouldn't register all its trucks in the lowest tax state?

On the contrary, registration laws are heavily enforced in cities here, because cities are where the highest proportion of on-street parking is, much of which requires a permit that will only be issued to a vehicle registered there.

[Brandon]

Anybody that does not understand that a per-mile tax will be a tax increase, probably because it will be IN ADDITION TO current fuel taxes and tolls, has not been paying attention.

And while it is currently illegal to do so already, the incentive to register in some low tax state gets multipled 10000 fold under such a system.  Today, you are just avoide wing registration fees and maybe some property taxes.  Under a per-mile tax, there will always be some state willing to go very low.  Out of state registration laws are hard to enforce, especially in big cities, resort areas, and near state lines.  And who is to say that UPS or such wouldn't register all its trucks in the lowest tax state?

On the contrary, registration laws are heavily enforced in cities here, because cities are where the highest proportion of on-street parking is, much of which requires a permit that will only be issued to a vehicle registered there.

Note that SP Cook did point out companies like UPS.  What would stop UPS, FedEx, or some other company like them from simply choosing the lowest tax state and moving all of their registrations to that state?  It may not be possible for the average resident of a major city such as Chicago, but these corporations will move their entire fleet registrations.

[andy3175]

Anybody that does not understand that a per-mile tax will be a tax increase, probably because it will be IN ADDITION TO current fuel taxes and tolls, has not been paying attention.

And while it is currently illegal to do so already, the incentive to register in some low tax state gets multipled 10000 fold under such a system.  Today, you are just avoide wing registration fees and maybe some property taxes.  Under a per-mile tax, there will always be some state willing to go very low.  Out of state registration laws are hard to enforce, especially in big cities, resort areas, and near state lines.  And who is to say that UPS or such wouldn't register all its trucks in the lowest tax state?

On the contrary, registration laws are heavily enforced in cities here, because cities are where the highest proportion of on-street parking is, much of which requires a permit that will only be issued to a vehicle registered there.

Note that SP Cook did point out companies like UPS.  What would stop UPS, FedEx, or some other company like them from simply choosing the lowest tax state and moving all of their registrations to that state?  It may not be possible for the average resident of a major city such as Chicago, but these corporations will move their entire fleet registrations.

A while ago in another city, I noticed some municipal buses having license plates issued in another state, and I had wondered if the registration occurred in another state in order to avoid higher license/registration fees.

[SP Cook]

I do see the point about cities and on-street parking.  I was talking more about a metro area as a whole.  Lets take DC as an example.  Say the tax rate is different between the various jurisdictions.  Good luck proving where people live.  Or take Florida.  Florida is probably going to have a high tax (it has a confiscatory fuel tax now).   Given the mix of retirees and tourists, good luck. 

[slorydn1]

I could, if I chose to, "legally" register my vehicles in 2 states (North Carolina or Florida) and with the help of friends/relatives choose between those 2 and 7 other states (New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, and Oregon) if I wanted to play the "I hope they don't catch me" game. What's stopping me from registering my vehicles in the state with the cheapest VMT if that were to come about? I wouldn't do that, but whats to stop me from doing it? This would have to really be worked out, and could be if the various different state agencies actually paid attention to what is being reported to them. Using my own example, how hard would it be to figure out that I work in, and have payroll taxes deducted from my checks in New Bern, NC. How hard would it be for NC to figure out that I really don't live in Hallandale Beach, FL and commute to New Bern every day to go to work (858 miles one way) to do the kind of job that I do at the pay I receive. NCDOR would be on that like a fly on stink, or at least they should be if they were paying attention.

For the record, I would be for a VMT of some kind as long as it doesn't involve GPS tracking, and if the existing fuel taxes are done away with. I have to bring my vehicle in every year to be inspected, make the tax based on the odometer reading that the inspector records from year to year. They could increase the penalties for odometer tampering into serious felonies (if they aren't already in some states) and that should curb most of that (yeah there will always be people who try it, some may even get away with it, but many will not. Will it be worth it to save a few hundred bucks to risk 10-15 years in prison? I don't think so.



Using real numbers, as of my last fill-ups for both cars (a few days ago) my wife and I have traveled 9863 miles this year so far, and have purchased 480.39 gallons of fuel (roughly 20.53 MPG) for the first 4 months of the year. At NC's $0.375/gallon tax rate that's roughly $180.15 in the state's coffers so far and just for my 2 cars. At $0.02/mile the tax for my wife and I so far this year would be $196.86 and (so just a little more) and the bonus would be is that Joe Blow down the street with the Prius and John Doe up in Raleigh with the Tesla would be paying the same $196.86 that I am with my Mustangs for the same mileage driven. Multiply those numbers x3 for arguments sake to figure out what a whole year would theoretically be and that comes out to be $540.45 using the gas tax for my wife and I but not for the Prius/Tesla owner or $590.58 from all of us for the entire year.

Maybe bump it to $0.025/mile for people with the really large 6k LB trucks and SUVs and I don't know, maybe $0.05-$0.10/mile for tractor trailers and all of a sudden we are talking real money.

Now there will be problems with the "what-if's" like "What if I drive to Virginia or Tennessee for a trip?" I still say the money should go to the state the vehicle is registered in. The various states should be able to come with some kind of formula to figure that out, maybe for some sort of revenue sharing for Interstate construction/maintenance (or maybe OTR truckers will have to be GPS tracked-many already are by their employers anyway).