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There's a Plan to Tax You for the Ability to Use Roads

Southern California is hatching a plan to restructure the way all of America pays taxes for using gas, essentially reframing the whole thing as a tax on use of roads rather than gas.

Image via Flickr user [upupa4me](https://www.flickr.com/photos/meanderingwa/ upupa4me)

Southern California is hatching a plan to restructure the way all of America pays taxes for using gas, essentially reframing the whole thing as a tax on use of roads rather than gas. A powerful coalition of county governments in the most populous state is pushing for a Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) fee to be imposed across the land by 2025.

On the face of it, the proposed VMT fee sounds like it’s meant to generate more revenue, be invasive, and make it impossible to hide from taxes by buying a low-mileage vehicle. Essentially, it’s designed to make tea partiers’ heads explode. But maybe there’s enough time in the next 11 years for them to cool off and consider that it might be for the best.

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I called Denny Zane of Move LA, a transit-focused nonprofit, for more information. He said a VMT fee is one of many attempts to come up with a way to fund our highways that’s “Both reliable and fair, and increases rather than declines as a revenue stream while the use of the transportation systems increase as population grows. We need revenue streams that can help meet those needs. The VMT fee is better than the gas tax in that respect.”

Together, the six Southern California counties pushing for this make up an entity called the Southern California Association of Governments. Southern California is a car-centric community that spent decades fighting against public transit expansion. There is grave concern here regarding the recent news that the federal Highway Trust Fund is about to be completely drained in July. When that happens, the federal support we count on to keep our crumbling highways and bridges taped together will vanish.

As we see it from our state, we pay the highest taxes in the country for our gas thanks to the cleverly named “excise tax” everyone pays, plus our added 39.5 cent tax. Meanwhile, the rest of America still pays only 18.4 cents a gallon to fund highways at the federal level. That rate has stayed at 18.4 cents for 20 years, and I’m sure Grover Norquist would chain himself to an Arco pump before he would let lawmakers pass a tax hike, or introduce a new sales tax.

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But here in "Carland," the existing tax evidently isn’t enough. If Congress can’t figure out a way to inject money into the highway fund from somewhere else, its disappearance means a loss of $46.8 billion for the local highway funds that need it. Mostly us in Carland. We’ll all be crushed to death by falling overpasses. Is that what you want?

Image via Youtube user LukkaVolkov

Meanwhile, not only have the costs of maintaining roads increased with inflation, but some people have switched over to driving hybrids and electric cars. Paying our highway taxes at the gas pump means those who need the highways a lot, but require little or no gas, theoretically aren’t paying their fair share for maintenance. A tax on the number of miles you drive, instead of how much gas you use means Uncle Sam is becoming agnostic about fuel efficiency.

If there’s one aspect of this trend that might redeem this tax for conservatives, maybe it’s the fact that it will affect all the Tesla drivers currently getting away with murder. But it’s still going to terrorize Glenn Beck for a different reason.

“Most formulations of the VMT fee involve electronic monitoring of vehicle miles traveled, and voters resist any kind of electronic monitoring by government entities, and the NSA fiasco is a good illustration of why,” Zane told me, adding, “It’s become radioactive.”

Denny Zane. Image via Youtube user [SmartpillJCD](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbTnLJPz6ZA smartpillJCD)

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It’s not clear how this is going to work. Which sounds better: Someone from the government poking their head in and reading your odometer, or a gizmo installed on your car that monitors how much you drive?

All that monitoring is one downside that might mean an old fashioned incremental sales tax could be more tempting than a VMT fee. Another is the anus-clenching moment when you’ll have to suddenly pay the fee every year. “Most likely, the public will pay their share at registration which means one lump sum.” Zane said. “The great advantage of an excise tax or a sales tax is that the public pays a small increment. That’s hugely advantageous for political acceptance.”

So far, all that’s happened is that the Southern California Association of Governments passed a resolution asking Congress to change the gas tax to the VMT fee, plus they’ve made it their agenda to create a pilot program for the fee structure in Southern California.

It may not happen, but if it does, we here in Carland will experience the carnage first. We’ll let you know how it goes.

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