Safety Cap's Journal: CA uppity again: tax cars based upon mileage

California's Dept of Motor Vehicles Chief is proposing to tax cars based upon mileage. The issue arose because the state is losing too much money from those communist pinkos who drive fuel efficient vehicles (unlike Gov. Ahhnold, who has more than one 10-mpg Hummer). A major source of state revenue comes from gas taxes.

The plan would call for installing a device on every car that either transmits mileage based upon GPS readings or the vehicle's odometer. One scenario has the taxes levied when the car drives up to the pump; the car device transmits the mileage to a reciever on the pump, which then adds the tax to the pump price.

One hope for the system is to discourage congestion during certain times of the day. For example, the tax on the 10 could jack up to $2/mile, whereas local streets could decrease to $0.10, thus encouraging people to get off the freeway.

Silly privacy advocates worry that such devices will allow cars to be tracked. Like that would ever happen.

Nope, no flaws in this plan... no way to circumvent the system, either. Besides, I see the best part in the whole thing: automated speeding ticket payment. Every time you speed, you get fined, and your cost is added to your "driving fee," so when you next fill up at the pump, you get to pay for it all in one go.

1. Buy $20 of gas
2. Pay $30 mileage tax and $200 for speeding fines
3. ???
4. (State) Profit!!

Not "No way to get around it"

[Marxist Hacker 42]

I can think of three easy ways to get around this system, mainly based on my own bad experiences trying to get GPS Navigation to work:

1. Move your recieving antenna to the trunk, where it will never see any satelites.

2. Shift the antenna over so that the 100' resolution includes side roads rather than the one you're running on.

3. If you're going to speed, cut off power to the GPS unit first.

Sorry, man

[Safety Cap]

I forgot my <sarcasm>...</sarcasm> tags :P

Let's assume they pony up the $$$ (or pass the savings on to you) to outfit every CA vehicle with one of these gizmos. What about the people who have cars they bought out of state? Gotta have a State-wide registry for 'em, right?

You're right about messing with the GPS antenna. Now, if they tie this thing into the odometer, well, "the wire fell off" might be a pretty good excuse for a while. What if the gizmo gets filled with mud and sand? Oops - sorr

Um

[Neop2Lemus]

In this case I would discard step 3 as per Occman's razor.:-p

We already do this

[gmhowell]

Taxes are already levied by mile driven. Via gasoline taxes. The more miles you drive, the more gas you use, the more taxes you pay. It's a system that works. It also shifts the 'burden' of taxation to those vehicles that damage the road the most: heavy trucks, semis, and SUVs. People working to fight pollution and not tear the shit out of the road are not taxed as heavily. Those using hybrids, motorcycles, or their feet don't have to fix roads they aren't destroying.