The latest 'lead balloon' (ba-dum-dum) floated by government to recapture lost gasoline taxes is to tax drivers per mile driven. A GPS chip in your car and sync'd to a reciever located all gas stations would record who you are, what you drive, (plus probably 100 other significant details of your life) and how far you have driven since the last fill up.
My first thought honestly wasn't, "How could they!!", but, "Will they repeal all the federal and state taxes on each gallon of gas drivers already pay?" The answer I am almost willing to bet is 'No'.
Now with the increase in fuel efficient vehicles and the changes in drivers patterns, the government is not getting its cheese and needs to find more creative and intrusive ways to tax the masses. This is the slippery slope that government has gotten itself into with taxing consumables like gas and you can lump cigarettes into that. Throughout the 80's and 90's and into the new century, federal and state governments placed such heavy tax burdens on a gallon of gas, that the government actually received more profit on gas than the oil companies themselves.
I am a proponent of user type taxes or more appropriately consumption taxes but only if the past tax structures it is replacing are repelled. In almost every state, if you look, you will find a tax that was created to pay for road construction that would last twenty years only and yet has not been taken off the books. Government is not apt to take taxes off the books and so there is layers and layers of taxes on Americans that simply don't need to be there except that its a revenue stream that the public has become desensitized too.
Perhaps it is Orwellian to have GPS recievers in every car and pay a taxes for drive miles at the pump. Maybe usage taxes are a good way to go. Lets take some taxes away as well.
My first thought honestly wasn't, "How could they!!", but, "Will they repeal all the federal and state taxes on each gallon of gas drivers already pay?" The answer I am almost willing to bet is 'No'.
Now with the increase in fuel efficient vehicles and the changes in drivers patterns, the government is not getting its cheese and needs to find more creative and intrusive ways to tax the masses. This is the slippery slope that government has gotten itself into with taxing consumables like gas and you can lump cigarettes into that. Throughout the 80's and 90's and into the new century, federal and state governments placed such heavy tax burdens on a gallon of gas, that the government actually received more profit on gas than the oil companies themselves.
I am a proponent of user type taxes or more appropriately consumption taxes but only if the past tax structures it is replacing are repelled. In almost every state, if you look, you will find a tax that was created to pay for road construction that would last twenty years only and yet has not been taken off the books. Government is not apt to take taxes off the books and so there is layers and layers of taxes on Americans that simply don't need to be there except that its a revenue stream that the public has become desensitized too.
Perhaps it is Orwellian to have GPS recievers in every car and pay a taxes for drive miles at the pump. Maybe usage taxes are a good way to go. Lets take some taxes away as well.
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