mdreid said:
Only place i think this could be inforced would be when you get your yearly inspection they add odometer calculation so that the DMV could ding you for a lot more money when you go to get your new registration sticker.
i hope to god this doesnt get through as i drive almost 40 miles roundtrip to work everyday.
I preface this by saying I'm against raising taxes.
Something -- and I don't know what -- needs to be done to better fund infrastructure. There is no reason that we have to spend months fighting over a grand compromise to fix our freaking roads and bridges.
Mileage tax has tons of issues. Enforcement, reasonable collection, etc. Only way this works, at all, is if you drop the gas tax, too.
Infrastructure funding is broken as a result of fuel efficiency. Congress was short-sighted when they started imposing these new efficiency standards and NOT addressing this in the 80s/90s.
By virtue of population growth, you have more cars on the road and you need more/wider roads. However, we're buying fewer gallons per capita. So funding infrastructure and road improvements via a per-gallon gas tax was going to lead here.
In 1999, the US consumed 131,800,000,000 gallons of gas. That equated to 472 gallons per person, per year.
In 2019, the US consumed 146,290,000,000 gallons of gas. That equated to 445 gallons per person, per year.
We've added 50,000,000 people since that time and 56,000,000 new cars. Yet we're generating less revenue via gas tax to support the roads and bridges that they need to use. Gas tax remains flat at 18.3 (or 18.4 if you count an additional fee that's not a tax) cents per gallon and hasn't increased in two decades. We're not even considering inflation, either.
Idk if mileage taxes are the issue, but ad hoc infrastructure bills that occur every so often can't be a sustainable answer.
