A black box in your car? Some see a source of tax revenue

[hbelkins]

Kentucky hasn't required vehicle inspections for decades. We used to have inspection stickers; they were "exchanged" for insurance stickers sometime in the 1970s. Now insurance stickers aren't required, only small cards that function as proof of insurance that must be shown to cops on request.

[Duke87]

One way to do it would be to simply add a section to the standard income tax return which asks you to provide the tag numbers of any vehicles you own and how many miles the vehicle was driven that year. Then you can let the taxpayers do all the math and data collection, and just use random audits to keep people honest the same as with other taxes.

But I see two problems with this:
1) Most people are not in the habit of keeping precise track of what their odometer reads at the end of the year (or ever) and would have to learn to do so. Lots of people would forget and have to fudge it.
2) There will be some people who own a car but currently do not have to file a tax return due to lack of income (retired or unemployed). These people would have to start filing returns.


So, here's another idea: lose the idea that the tax must be collected on an annual basis, and instead require that the odometer reading be read and reported whenever:
1) a car is sold or leased
2) a lease on a car ends
3) an emissions or safety inspection is performed
4) a car is totaled or junked

By this method all miles on every car will be accounted for and reported at some point, it just won't necessarily occur at regular intervals.

The only downside I see to this is the potential for someone to buy a new car, drive it a ton of miles, and then all of a sudden get stuck with a huge bill they can't afford 4-5 years later when it comes up for its first emissions test.

[formulanone]

At any rate, modifying 90% of the existing vehicles on the road to The Black Box might take 10 years. The only way that's reasonably happening, is if some sort of "OBD III" computer is standardized and approved for vehicles in the future. And then, give it 15-30 years until another 90% of the vehicles on the road are converted to this new standard. I could see the insurance companies getting behind this, but they're going to head-butt the liberty groups in the meanwhile; whose business is it where I drive, for how long, and at what rate? This also doesn't take into consideration the weight of a vehicle, the difference of an econocar's impact versus that of a light truck on a road surface (which might be infinitesimal differences, compared to heavy trucks). How would mileage on a toll road be compared to that of a "free" city street, et cetera?

So, fat chance of this happening at all, unless the overloads make it so under penalty of something-or-other. It's just far easier to raise/adjust the gas tax; and if you really are bent on paying less in fuel taxes, find a more fuel efficient car or find another method of transportation.

[Brandon]

I'd rather toll the freeways (with an EZ-Pass type transponder) and maintain the current fuel taxes.  We'd also do well to add taxes to charging points for electric vehicles.  These could be collected at the public charging point by use of an electronic payment (somewhat like we have with the pay-at-pump systems we have for gasoline and diesel fuel).  There could also be a separate meter for electric vehicle charge points in the home (as they usually use a different type of plug anyway for quick charging).

Trying to use a "black box" or pay via odometer readings brings too much intrusion or fraud into this, IMHO.

[Crazy Volvo Guy]

Convert the gas tax to per-dollar instead of per-gallon, with a bottom-out clause that causes a fixed per-gallon rate to kick in should the price ever drop below a certain threshold.  Add a clause there that automatically indexes the 'bottom-out flat rate' to inflation  Problem solved, never have to worry about passing a gas tax increase again.