Dutch Government To Tax Drivers Based On Car Use 500
An anonymous reader writes "The Netherlands is testing a new car use tax system that will tax drivers based upon how much they drive rather than just taxing the vehicle itself. The trials utilize a little box outfitted with GPS, wireless internet, and a complex rating system that tracks a car's environmental impact, its distance driven, its route, and what time it is driven as a fairer way to assess the impact of the vehicle and hopefully dissuade people from driving. The proposal will be introduced slowly as a replacement for the current car and gas tax, however it is most certainly controversial and will be a real test of how far environmentally savvy Dutch citizens will be willing to go to reduce the impact of the car."
A No Brainer (Score:2, Interesting)
Wish we could do that in other places such as fat-ass-central: the USA. But that would smack of some environmental/social welfare idea and the fat-ass Conservatives would have none of it.
Re:This was proposed in Oregon (Score:5, Interesting)
and how would you measure that without a GPS odometer in every car?
Easy. By taxing tires.
Re:Fuel tax? (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not less accurate, it's completely correct. Fuel-based taxation is the perfect solution, and every country I'm aware of already taxes fuel heavily. To add another tax on top of it is either really ignorant (unlikely) or an attempt by the powers that be to further and unfairly lighten the wallets of their citizenry, wrapped up in an "environmentally-conscious" sugar coating. Fighting this unfair tax would now mean that you're an anti-environment reactionary doing the bidding of the dirty oil companies.
old news, and how robust will this system be?? (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm a bit surprised to see this article at slashdot. The plans to have tax on milage (kilometer heffing in dutch) are already existing for a very long time here in the Netherlands. The former government was actually planning to introduce this, but the current government killed the project. So for me this isn't really news.
Further I'm very interested to see how such a system can be made robust. GPS signals are very weak and are easily jammed. One weather balloon and GPS jammer under the balloon will stop tax collection for half the nation.
We really need more engineers in politics!
Re:This was proposed in Oregon (Score:5, Interesting)
Doesn't easily extend to electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles. And as vehicle efficiency increases and alternative vehicles become more popular, your tax revenue drops while your costs to maintain the roads remains the same. Gasoline and diesel are also used in non-vehicle engines (generators, farm and construction equipment, small engine tools, etc) which would be paying this tax while not contributing to road maintenance expenses.
Taxing actual road use makes the most sense. You can scale it by vehicle weight and class (since fuel use is not linearly proportional to vehicle weight, while road damage is), create residential, commercial and industrial tiers if you want since a heavy truck that gets 12MPG does more damage than a large car that gets the same. It takes the state of maintenance of the vehicle out of the equation (poor fuel economy due to poor maintenance).
If the goal is to reduce fuel use (and I agree with that goal), we should STILL tax nonrenewable carbon fuels.
=Smidge=
Re:This was proposed in Oregon (Score:4, Interesting)
The fuel taxes/levies are a constant. This proposed system takes congestion on roads and times of use into consideration. Per the article the drive from Eindhoven airport to the city center(?) costs 5 EUR during rushour. That is a 15-30m drive for something like 10km. Off-peak I can do that trip in under 10m on my bike. In the current system the variable costs for this trip is approx the same for all vehicles alike (when using the same fuel type and mileage): approx. 0.5l of fuel.
The theory is that putting a higher price on driving during rushhour will result in less people on the road at the same time, people that can avoid the rush hour premium will do so. At the same time the fixed costs of owning a vehicle is reduced (yearly road taxes) and the taxes on buying a car should be abolished (BPM http://www.vdsautomotive.nl/en/zakelijk/bpm-calculator [vdsautomotive.nl] ). Overall this would be a more fair system for use based taxation, but the main fear people have is that levies on fuel, the road tax and BPM will remain making driving more expensive. Only a small minority will oppose this for privacy reasons.