Infrastructure Bill Could Enable Government To Track Drivers' Travel Data (theintercept.com) 238
Presto Vivace shares a report from The Intercept: The Senate's $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill proposes a national test program that would allow the government to collect drivers' data in order to charge them per-mile travel fees. The new revenue would help finance the Highway Trust Fund, which currently depends mostly on fuel taxes to support roads and mass transit across the country. Under the proposal, the government would collect information about the miles that drivers travel from smartphone apps, another on-board device, automakers, insurance companies, gas stations, or other means. For now, the initiative would only be a test effort -- the government would solicit volunteers who drive commercial and passenger vehicles -- but the idea still raises concerns about the government tracking people's private data.
The bill would establish an advisory board to guide the program that would include officials representing state transportation departments and the trucking industry as well as data security and consumer privacy experts. As the four-year pilot initiative goes on, the Transportation and Treasury departments would also have to keep Congress informed of how they maintain volunteers' privacy and how the per-mile fee idea could affect low-income drivers. Still, [Sean Vitka, policy counsel at Demand Progress] said the concept could put Americans' private data at risk. "We already know the government is unable to keep data like this secure, which is another reason why the government maintaining a giant database of travel information about people in the United States is a bad idea." "If you think this is a bad idea, NOW would be a good time to let your Senators and representative know," says Slashdot reader Presto Vivace.
The bill would establish an advisory board to guide the program that would include officials representing state transportation departments and the trucking industry as well as data security and consumer privacy experts. As the four-year pilot initiative goes on, the Transportation and Treasury departments would also have to keep Congress informed of how they maintain volunteers' privacy and how the per-mile fee idea could affect low-income drivers. Still, [Sean Vitka, policy counsel at Demand Progress] said the concept could put Americans' private data at risk. "We already know the government is unable to keep data like this secure, which is another reason why the government maintaining a giant database of travel information about people in the United States is a bad idea." "If you think this is a bad idea, NOW would be a good time to let your Senators and representative know," says Slashdot reader Presto Vivace.
Eventually milage will taxed/charged. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Electric cars get free road usage now
That's not true. I pay an EV tax in WA specifically for the purpose of road maintenance.
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It's a flat tax in Oklahoma, too, which makes it regressive for those who don't drive much.
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Stay with me here, but how about instead of something that intrusive we charge a tax on purchase of all vehicles based on the average estimated cost to support the infrastructure required by the vehicle? Yes, it definitely won't be exact - "muh garage princess only drives 200 miles a year!!" and "haha my shitbox that cost $14k drives 20k miles a year", but it really doesn't matter as long as it all averages out. And you just tweak it over time.
Vehicle prices will go up considerably, the used car market will
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This is quickly becoming false [ncsl.org]. 28 states right now have their systems set up now so that [usually] when you get new tags for your car, if you have a HEV or BEV, your car tag costs extra to offset the lost taxes from gas taxes.
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That only covers the loss of gas tax to the states, it does not cover the loss of the federal gas tax. This is a federal program.
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Yeah, I bought a hybrid and didn't see a bump, but then mine gets fuel economy equal to a really frugal ICE model, mostly due to the local traffic management, and I have tried to hypermile. Nope.
If states spend gas tax money on roads instead of pilfering these funds for other uses, this would not be so big a deal, and some states spend much of their gas tax money elsewhere.
I expect gas taxes to go up as gas consumption goes down. That is Econ 101. How to fund road maintenance/construction in a future where
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You are incorrect on a couple of points. We all pay registration fees in the United States which goes towards roads, and in my state, EV drivers pay an extra $100 a year. So, the EV owner does not get free use of the road. Additionally, I pay to use toll roads in other states. So, how do you see that we get free road usage.
Now let's talk about the free use of pollution that your fossil fuel car contributes. You seem to think that your fuel tax should only go to building and maintaining roads for you to
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First, this is about the FEDERAL Highway Trust Fund. That is funded with gas taxes (primarily). Your registration fee (and extra EV fee) have absolutely nothing to do with that, so as far as the FEDERAL trust fund goes, EV owners are paying exactly $0.
As for the rest of your rant, WTF?
Should some of that money be used for emergency services when you have an accident? How about storm water taxes for the extra runoff because of all the paved roads. The externalities should be paid for and not simply passed off to others.
What does any of that have to do with the discussion? Are you trying to claim that only ICE cars have accidents or require paved roads?
The simple fact is that the Highway Trust Fund exists to pay for roads. Period. EV
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Governments could put additional tax on Electricity Generation or say for any home that uses over 1000kWh for a given month, this will be able to ding the work from homers, or bit coin miners. Also promote more energy efficiency.
Other than parking meters, you could have charging stations which are priced for a net profit to the municipality.
Taxes on High speed chargers in the charging network.
They are other ways than tax people per mile. That is less intrusive and exposes our private information. Also can b
Why mileage? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why not simply add a surcharge to the annual vehicle registration? You could have different tiers based on type of vehicle (lightweight subcompacts which damage the roads the least pay the least, big tractor trailers pay the most) to make up for some of the lost fairness. But you remove the additional expense of equipment to collect travel data (phones won't work since they're not tied to a specific car), and a system to collate and manage that data. And that's on top of the massive privacy intrusion this represents. You just know it's a matter of time before it gets used by the FBI and police to track "fugitives". (A term which is increasingly coming to mean anyone currently out of political favor.)
The Federal gas tax [wikipedia.org] is 18.4 center/gallon. Vehicles are driven 3.23 trillion miles/yr [energy.gov]. If you figure an average 25 MPG, that works out to $23.8 billion in fuel taxes. Divide by the approx 290 million vehicles in operation [hedgescompany.com], and it averages out to just $82 per year per vehicle. Maybe triple it to account for state fuel taxes - figure $240/yr. A disproportionate fraction of that would fall upon commercial trucks, so the average passenger car's road tax would be on the order of $100-$150 per year. That just doesn't seem like a big enough deal to go through the trouble of tracking individual vehicle mileage and intruding on people's privacy, to generate a perfectly fair use assessment.
Re:Eventually milage will taxed/charged. (Score:5, Insightful)
As an EV owner, why should I pay taxes to fund the military that protects oil exports from theocratic regimes in the Mideast?
Because that pothole will fuckup your EV tire just as much as my ICE tire.
Why should I have to pay more than you to fix the problems we both cause and both have to live with?
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Because that pothole will fuckup your EV tire just as much as my ICE tire.
The AI in my EV remembers the pothole from yesterday and steers around it today.
Re:Eventually milage will taxed/charged. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Eventually milage will taxed/charged. (Score:5, Insightful)
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AC, that is a myth that keeps getting perpetuated by ICE drivers and spread by fossil fuel companies.
The curb weight of the Chevrolet Bolt EV, Tesla Model 3 and Nissan Leaf are almost identical (and in fact slightly less for 2 of the 3) to the curb weight of a Ford Mustang (and not the electric one). They are around 800 pounds lighter than a Ford Explorer. Even a bitchin' Camaro weighs as much as those EVs.
So, which vehicle is causing more wear and tear on the road? And keep in mind that for a gas powere
Re:Eventually milage will taxed/charged. (Score:5, Insightful)
> Why should I have to pay more than you to fix the problems we both cause and both have to live with?
Not sure if you missed the "externalities" part of the parent comment, or if you just don't understand what they meant and ignored it. Petroleum fueled vehicles cost taxpayers much more than just road maintenance.
As an EV owner myself, I'd be fine paying per mile. There are difficulties determining how that money gets distributed, which is what this article is about, but conceptually it seems fair. I've also long advocated for the road taxes to have adjustments for vehicle weight and use (e.g. personal vs. commercial) to encourage lighter, more efficient personal vehicles.
Also, increase the petroleum fuel taxes - since they've been stagnant for decades - to help pay for all the damage they do that nobody's directly paying for.
=Smidge=
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While you were sleeping, the US became a net exporter of petroleum products. The price we pay at the pump is affected by the world at large, but we aren't in the same stranglehold position we were when I was young.
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Gasoline, Tobacco, and Alcohol taxes are called Sin Taxes, as they were taxes created to curve bad behavior. Going EV we stopped a behavior so we shouldn't have to pay that tax. We pay other taxes which should had gone to fixing the road.
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Once the government enacts a tax (or program)....they don't EVER want to let it go away.
That's why you have to question every new one they try to enact.
And as another said....I've never head of gas taxes termed as a "sin tax".
Those taxes go to fund roads and road repairs.
Nothing to do with pollution or "externalities".
Because your gas car (Score:2)
Also we could just pay for roads with income taxes. I don't know very many people who don't drive in America. There's a handful of people over 65 and then there's children but they don't count because they drive and their parents cars and on buses. We built our public transportation system on priva
Re:Eventually milage will taxed/charged. (Score:5, Interesting)
But EVs still generate wear and tear on the road. Gas taxes are to maintain the roads, most laws require the funds to be used to maintain and improve roadways, they don't go into the "general" fund.
Some states charge EV owners a higher registration fee, sometimes hundreds of dollars a year, to make up for the loss gas taxes,
I drive an EV as well.
Re:Eventually milage will taxed/charged. (Score:5, Informative)
If the taxes are to cover wear and tear on the road, the taxes should be proportional to the sum of the 4th power of each axle weight, since the wear and tear is proportional to the sum of the 4th power of each axle weight.
https://www.gao.gov/products/1... [gao.gov]
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Re:Eventually milage will taxed/charged. (Score:5, Informative)
>What weighs more? A battery electric car? Or, a car that has an internal combustion engine?
Typically a BEV is heavier for a sedan. There are not a lot of other form factors in common use to compare. I drive a Tesla which would cost more to tax under a wear-level proportional tax than a similar ICE car. Sucks for me if it happened, but it will not.
But sedans of all forms are not remotely as heavy as a large truck and large trucks are externalizing the cost of road repair to the rest of us.
Re:Eventually milage will taxed/charged. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Eventually milage will taxed/charged. (Score:5, Insightful)
Or they'll ship more stuff on lighter trucks or trucks with more axles or by train in order to decrease their taxes.
To avoid the need for trucks, maybe they'll even have stores with rail spurs running right up to their docks. Warehouse stores.
But the current subsidies are preventing such innovation and costing everyone money, as subsidies always do.
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Re:Eventually milage will taxed/charged. (Score:5, Insightful)
We have been under a trucking shortage for at least a decade based on my recollection, and rail usage has not really picked up one iota. We've just all paid more for trucking, or had to wait on delayed access to trucks. There is a chronic shortage of drivers, which COVID has exacerbated, but predates the virus by a wide margin. A decade of economic pressure has not resulted in meaningful change to how we ship goods in the US, and another decade this way is unlike to change that.
Every company wants to outsource their transportation needs to a dedicated trucking company to avoid idle trucks. The trucking companies also want to avoid idle trucks, and so don't own more than they can consistently lease out. They complain about lack of drivers, but don't pay drivers well enough to boost recruiting sufficiently to alter the problem. The government has been cracking down on time behind the wheel for safety reasons, but that cuts into how much the drivers can make at the current rates, and exacerbates the driver shortage problem. Younger people don't want to drive long haul trucks, because that job fucking sucks (my dad did it for ~5 years), and expect livable wages/benefits/etc. which either the companies don't offer, or expect you to be on the road so much that you can't really have a social life/family.
Essentially all of the economic levers are there to trigger changes in our transportation system, but it is not happening because owners of these businesses don't need to change. The tighter trucking supply gets, the more money they make from the assets they have. Paying wages that increase recruitment/retention would cost more than they stand to make from the status quo. Only companies willing to build out their own transportation infrastructure (Amazon, Walmart, etc.) are able to prevent logistics issues under the circumstances. And it only works for them because they operate at such a large scale.
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Actually, it has [theloadstar.com], by running longer trains. But trains are also suffering from a driver shortage so you don't see more trains, if that's how you gauge rail usage.
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Hard to tell if that's true, partly because of the general economic ups and downs. But intermodal rail shipping, at least, has gone up.
Re:Eventually milage will taxed/charged. (Score:5, Insightful)
Shift the road cost to trucking and you'll just pay it back in more expensive trucked goods.
Then people will prefer cheaper goods that are light or locally produced and thus incur less shipping costs.
So fewer heavy trucks will be tearing up the road.
Markets work best when externalities are incorporated into the price.
Re:Eventually milage will taxed/charged. (Score:4, Insightful)
> Then people will prefer cheaper goods that are light or locally produced and thus incur less shipping costs
"Why don't starving people move to where the food is"
I guess the old saying proves true; For every problem there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
=Smidge=
Re:Eventually milage will taxed/charged. (Score:4, Insightful)
The same amount of goods will need to arrive on store shelves. To get it there, using 10 smaller trucks instead of 1 bigger truck, traffic will become impossible to navigate. We'd need to build a lot more roads. Nope, that "many smaller trucks" idea is a dead end.
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Compared to the fourth power of the axle weight of a semi, the difference in road damage between a battery automobile and an ICE automobile, if any, is a rounding error.
Gas taxes are not there to maintain the roads (Score:2)
Build domestic production so prevent resource wars (Score:5, Informative)
As an EV owner, why should I pay taxes to fund the military that protects oil exports from theocratic regimes in the Mideast?
Where do you believe the lithium and cobalt come from for the batteries in your BEV? They may not come from the Middle East but they come from places outside the USA. Rare earth metals for the magnets in the BEV motors come from outside the USA.
Unlike lithium and cobalt there's enough known reserves of rare earth metals in the USA to meet our needs so we don't have to import that. The problem with rare earth metal mining in the USA is that the ores rich in rare earth metals are also rich in thorium, and the regulations on thorium treat it like weapon grade plutonium. Being considered "weapon grade radioactive material" means they can't just dump it back in the hole it came from like the tails from most other mining would be done. Because there's almost no market for thorium they can't just sell it, so it has to be hauled off to radioactive waste sites, which are already overwhelmed for lack of funding. There used to be a number of markets for thorium, as an additive to make steel or aluminum alloys, produce glass for photo and video lenses, use in mantles for gas lanterns, and I may be missing one or two. The only place I am aware of that thorium is used in the USA is in some kinds of welding rods. There's been a lobbying effort to open up these markets again, and create a potentially very large market in producing power by nuclear fission.
Also from overseas are a lot of the electronics in your BEV. If we are to keep open the shipping lanes for the materials to make motors and batteries, the electronic components, and so many other parts in BEVs made in other nations then BEV owners should be paying taxes to pay for the US Navy and US Coast Guard that protect shipping lanes to the USA.
The USA could produce the rare earth metals we need domestically. The USA could produce the electronics. Maybe with some new battery chemistry and/or new means to produce the required materials, such as extracting them from sea salts, then the USA could scale back it's military. We know the USA can produce all the hydrocarbon fuel it needs. The USA is exporting coal, petroleum crude and refined fuels, and natural gas. There are companies, and government entities, working on ways to produce hydrocarbon fuels so that should there be a disruption in fuel production we will have the ability to fill domestic demand.
In short, BEVs are more dependent on foreign imports than ICEVs today.
Complaints about "wars for oil" may have had justifications in the past but that's gone now. If you want to end the reliance on imports for making BEVs then we need to mine for rare earth metals, put the thorium that comes out of the ground with those metals to use producing energy, build a domestic electronics industry capable of making all the electronics we need, and generally remove reliance on foreign imports. That is not a call for isolationism, as this is not a call to end trade with other nations. It is a call to have the ability to isolate the nation so that if there is a war, a trade war or otherwise, that the USA will not be dragged into it.
These wars for oil are just one kind of resource war, there are many kinds of resource wars. There is no need for American involvement in another oil war because the USA produces enough oil for it's own needs, or close enough that if cut off from imports it won't bring the economy to a stop. We will see problems if the global oil trade was disturbed. The USA is a near net zero importer of oil, which means we sell a lot of oil to Japan and then buy a lot from Brazil because it's cheaper than moving Alaskan oil to refineries in Texas.
BEVs won't prevent resource wars. More mining and manufacturing in the USA would.
Re:Build domestic production so prevent resource w (Score:4, Interesting)
The good news is that cobalt is unlikely to be part of batteries [utexas.edu] in the near future.
The USA could produce the rare earth metals we need domestically.
Sure. The issue here is that China is undercutting the rest of the world by laying waste to their own land to extract rare earths. By not caring about their local environment (or people), they prevent other nations from even bothering to extract their own resources as they would unable to recoup the cost of extraction.
The problem with rare earth metal mining in the USA is that the ores rich in rare earth metals are also rich in thorium, and the regulations on thorium treat it like weapon grade plutonium.
To be fair, thorium dust is somewhat dangerous. It is a health hazard though I suspect more on the level of being like asbestos than plutonium.
There's been a lobbying effort to open up these markets again, and create a potentially very large market in producing power by nuclear fission.
Frankly, we need to build a functional thorium reactor before we talk about making a market for the stuff.
If you want to end the reliance on imports for making BEVs
Honestly, doing anything of the sort requires A LOT of cheap energy. This means we either need to get cool with a lot of things regarding current nuclear technology (unlikely) or we need to develop better nuclear technology. With better technology, we can loosen the knot of regulation (made with the best of intentions) that has kept nuclear an out of reach solution. From here there are lots of ways to proceed. Frankly, I just want to level the playing field with nations that have no problem crushing their people or the environment to get ahead. We could export this technology widely, making the reactors all-but-free but predicate it on an agreement to only import resources/goods made using first-world levels of human safety and environmental regulation adherence.
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As an EV owner, why should I pay taxes to fund the military that protects oil exports from theocratic regimes in the Mideast?
EV owners should pay less tax because our transportation has fewer externalities.
Good point. After all, the "road use taxes" do not go to repair the roads proportional to damages caused almost entirely by overladen trucks.
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If you complain about your tax money going to things you don't like, you are just as bad as those people who complain that tax money is going to things that you do like.
And yes for those hard noes conservatives out there, they are plenty of government funded things that you like that it is government funded, that sissy liberals are calling a waste of money.
Not all goods and services can prosper by the "Invisible hand of capitalism" but services that we need, that we may not think we want or at least spend
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I'm sure thirty years ago there were people saying "any politician that's behind warrantless surveillance of American citizens will have their careers destroyed. It won't fly".
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Meh (Score:5, Interesting)
Funding the transportation fund is something that has to be done and flat fees are typically a non-starter for everyone for different reasons. So everyone wants a pay what you use method but nobody ever purposes how we do just that. And with gasoline slowly fading to EVs pay what you use gets a bit harder. I've heard proposals like this "track by GPS". I've heard "track by camera", track by mileage reporting, putting tolls on pretty much everything, and other "interesting" methods for how we do the whole "pay as you go". All of them have pitfalls to address, like mileage reporting works at the Federal level, but at State and county levels gets a bit trickier. Those 500 miles you just did, were they 100% in your State or was some of it in some other State?
As far as databases for travel. Travel logs exists and if you've ever been in an airplane or Amtrak, you're in one of them for easy recall by the government. Additionally, the IRS knows where you live, knows where you work, how many kids you have, can very likely figure out where they go to school. And outside of all that, people on the Internet freely share their whereabouts to the world at large. So the argument of:
We already know the government is unable to keep data like this secure, which is another reason why the government maintaining a giant database of travel information about people in the United States is a bad idea.
Human beings don't even keep this secure anymore.
I get what Sean Vitka is getting at here. The government will have this data but I mean gosh, it really feels like that ship already set sail. So much location data is already held by private companies that don't even have to answer to the public. At least with the government we elect the people and get somewhat a say about the data. With someone like Google, there's zero reasons for them to listen to any single person and the usual "vote with your dollar" thing doesn't work anymore. Go somewhere else with your money, and Google will just buy them out too.
But you know I'm interested in what anyone else has to say on the matter. I obviously don't want to hand that data over to the government, but at the same time, most of us already hand that data out freely with zero oversight and recourse if it gets stolen.
Re:Meh (Score:4, Interesting)
Tire wear as a measure of road usage.
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Cheaper tyres = higher road taxes.
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Those 500 miles you just did, were they 100% in your State or was some of it in some other State?
Shouldn't that even out? People in Kansas likely drive to Nebraska about as often as vice versa.
So everyone can just pay in their home state.
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Shouldn't that even out? People in Kansas likely drive to Nebraska about as often as vice versa.
You do realize we're talking about Reps in a State assembly? You would be hard pressed to find a more pedantic group. They would want proof from a twenty-five year study in triplicates that it would even out before they would agree to losing money to some other State. Especially if we're talking about Kansas/Nebraska.
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> Shouldn't that even out? People in Kansas likely drive to Nebraska about as often as vice versa.
I live in New York. There's no shortage of people who live here most of the year but drive cars with Florida plates because they are technically Florida residents. So under your proposal, these people would do basically all their driving in NY but pay road use tax in Florida.
There's also lots of people who commute across state lines daily and who knows how much driving they do on either side of the state lin
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> I used to live in Florida. You act as if New Yorkers never drive there. Thanks for the laugh.
If course it swings both ways; an example is just an example.
> You can drive across a lot of states without filling your gas tank, so we're already living with people paying taxes in states they're not driving in
Sure, but there's something of a fundamental limit to how much driving can be done with fuel purchased exclusively out-of-state isn't there? It's a self-limiting problem.
> For noncommercial vehicl
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Yeah, but trying to micro-manage is how you get inefficient bureaucracies. It's like the studies showing just giving everyone $X would be cheaper than means testing because of all the overhead.
Make new care purchasers pay a tax based on the weight of the vehicle. They don't like it? Fuck them. Would also discourage the tanks we have driving around.
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Aren't odometers pretty much tamperproof now? With modern digital ones I don't think tampering is very common anymore.
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> Aren't odometers pretty much tamperproof now?
They're probably less tamper-proof then they've ever been, considering for under US$20 you can buy a thingy that just plugs in and can be removed without leaving any evidence of tampering...
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/1... [hackaday.com]
=Smidge=
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Funding the transportation fund is something that has to be done and flat fees are typically a non-starter for everyone for different reasons.
Since everyone seems to be making arguments justifying courses of actions based on existing precedent here is one: Property taxes are not based on how many of ones spawn attend public education.
So everyone wants a pay what you use method but nobody ever purposes how we do just that. And with gasoline slowly fading to EVs pay what you use gets a bit harder. I've heard proposals like this "track by GPS". I've heard "track by camera", track by mileage reporting, putting tolls on pretty much everything, and other "interesting" methods for how we do the whole "pay as you go".
All of them have pitfalls to address, like mileage reporting works at the Federal level, but at State and county levels gets a bit trickier. Those 500 miles you just did, were they 100% in your State or was some of it in some other State?
It's not fair my Japanese neighbor spends all of their time video chatting with friends in Japan while I spend all of my time video chatting with friends on the other side of town. Why should I have to pay the same $$$ for Internet as my neighbor?
Internet access should be billed by bit miles and all ISPs should be
Odometer (Score:5, Insightful)
If only there was already a device installed in every car that could record the number of miles driven.
Seem like they're more interested in the the surveillance data than the mileage -- or maybe they have cronies that want to sell the surveillance device...
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If only there was already a device installed in every car that could record the number of miles driven.
Yes it does. *rolls back the dial*
Re:Odometer (Score:5, Insightful)
Make it a felony to roll back an odometer (hint it's already illegal). And make calibration and a new easy to read digital odometer a requirement. Plug yourself in once a year at the DMV or with a smartphone app and pay your tax with your registration.
There is zero damn reason that the government needs to log my GPS coordinates when I am driving. It's overreach and it is a slap in the face to the spirit of the fourth Amendment if not the law itself.
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And there is no inspection at all in WY, with mail in registration for plates. While there are a few vehicles I've driven behind that I wish did have to be inspected an fixed, mostly with long distances between places you make sure your vehicle is running so you don't breakdown a hundred miles or more from service (or drive a popular US brand that has more service locations).
Re:Odometer (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes it does. *rolls back the dial*
Easier said than done. The odometers on cars are highly regulated and built to self destruct at amateur attempts to roll them back. That doesn't make it impossible to roll them back, only more trouble than it is worth in most cases. Part of that "trouble" is going to the state pen for fraud if caught rolling back the odometer to raise resale value, and certainly rolling back an odometer to evade taxes would carry similar or greater punishment.
Legislators know that odometers exist so this is not about taxation. This is just about finding an excuse to put GPS tracking in your car.
What is it about these people that compel them to want to involve themselves so much in our lives? What kind of mental illness is this? No doubt current and former government officials will be exempt from this tracking. That would not be "safe" or some bullshit.
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If privacy were a real concern to legislators there is a solution that would both accurately track movement and not log all activity with GPS.
Use GPS to track overall milage but don't save the actual locations. This could even be compared to the odometer to minimize the chance funny business is happening like using GPS blockers while driving to hide miles driven.
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If only there was already a device installed in every car that could record the number of miles driven
The only problem with that is it does not tell you where those miles were driven. There's a State and County cut to fuel tax. So reporting an odometer reading just tells you how many miles. But if you did a cross country drive, there's a few states/counties that would have gotten a cut of the fuel tax that will now miss out on that cut. And that's why you get political opposition from State assemblies on these kinds of ideas. Your idea is a great one, the only problem is most State Governments won't ac
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That's a specious argument anyway. If you are a gas station near a state border, there's a large percentage of miles driven for which the fuel tax was paid in a different state. 99% of driving is done in the state where fuel is purchased. So "paying tax in a place where you don't drive" already happens, but it's not enough to matter.
Situations with high "seasonal" residence, such as the oft mentioned "people that register their plates in Florida but live much of the year in some other state" are a differe
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Seem like they're more interested in the the surveillance data than the mileage -- or maybe they have cronies that want to sell the surveillance device...
You have been deemed a valuable product to sell. And since the product pimps at mega-corps provide a good amount of money flowing to Government earning them Donor Class status, of course all new bills will include some level of mass surveillance capture.
To answer your question, yes and yes.
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We just need the average driver to pay the average amount it costs to support the average car
Problem with that is a lot of the Southeastern and Midwestern states are very opposed to flat fee taxes. So they'll not get on board with "average driver/average pay". So while that sounds like a sane process, some States will block implementation of such a thing and it's very likely their Representatives and Senators will oppose such as well.
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How about just mandating that the chargers themselves have to phone home how much juice you’re using (no different than the smart meter you likely already have at your home), and you get taxed accordingly?
What about people who charge at home? Or find some random unprotected plug somewhere and just 120V off that? The actual circuits that "charge" an EV are inside the vehicle itself, the part outside of the car just wire changes and provides a fuse (unless we start getting into fast charging). So it's not like having to distill your own fuel here, building your own plug for your car is a fairly easy thing to do since the majority of the complexity is inside the car itself. The point being is that there wil
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Are we really going to argue that tax loopholes are reasons taxes are not workable?
* laughs in billionaire*
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The problem with taxing by mileage is it provides no incentive to purchase a more efficient vehicle. I drive a cheap ICE econobox, and as a consequence I get far more miles for my tax dollar than someone who drives a gargantuan SUV.
The EPA produces official fuel economy figures. You could factor that in somehow.
Insurance and inspections (Score:3)
For those states with safety/emissions inspections, the mileage is already recored and sent to the respective DMV/BMV/RMV.
Insurance companies also ask for this information.
The sale of a car forces disclosure of the odometer, and this information is obtained by the DMV/BMV/RMV.
This data isn't secret, apps and gas stations (which EVs are constantly avoiding) aren't necessary for this.
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Heck, many newer cars send telemetry to the auto manufacturer, including the odometer reading.
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Heck, many newer cars send telemetry to the auto manufacturer, including the odometer reading.
How hot do you reckon this here pot is now? Oh look a fly... yummy...
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Sounds like the government version of an app asking for more permissions than it needs. Typical overreach.
What they don't know is if those miles were put on state or private roads or by farm use, etc. Granted, a statistically insignificant number of miles are driven off public roadways and it's better to take the technologically simpler approach like you said: tax road use at registration renewal.
IRS/Tax system overhaul in disguise? (Score:2)
At first when I saw this article I laughed because there is no way this program/tax would ever fly because no one Republican or Democrat, is going to tolerate seeing a direct tax linked to how much they drove. Sure, gas taxes are just that, but the tax is "hidden" in most people's eyes.
But then I started thinking about this more: how the fuck would they tax you? No one is going to track their miles driven and the misreporting from "guessing" would just overload the IRS in potential audits. So the likely ans
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Just make the tax post-paid. Automobile registration renewals in most states are annual and at least in my state, that's where the BEV/hybrid road tax is applied (550 USD per vehicle this year). The BMV/DMV can plug an obdII dongle every couple of years to sync up and charge you the difference. Title transfer form has number of miles on it at transfer time signed by both old and new owner, which is used for registration. The BMV can just mail the old owner a bill. The solution doesn't need to be high tech a
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In my state (NY) annual safety inspections are mandatory. Part of this is recording the odometer reading.
NY also has mandatory liability insurance, so one easy way to do this would be to give the odometer readings to your insurance company and have them collect the taxes as part of your premiums. This could spread the cost out into monthly payments and make it more palatable.
The reason GPS comes into it, however, is the majority of a vehicle's driving does not necessarily occur in the state the vehicle is r
You're all focusing on the wrong thing (Score:5, Insightful)
IMHO, there should be a law such that when a bill is released there can be no vote on it for (page count) / 50 working days. Any change to the bill, no matter how minor, restarts the clock. The idea is everyone has plenty of time to grok the thing and these little nuggets of bullshit can have a spotlight shone on them.
Oh yeah, if the bill contains (see fred's bill), then fred's bill is included in the page count.
Legions of interns reading sections of the bill to grok it all? Yeah, no.
You don't understand how these things happen. In page 84 there will be carbon, a useful way to cook steak and heat your house, which nobody cares about. Page 923 is sulfer, which cures rubber and treats dandruff, nobody cares about. Page 2041 is potassium nitrate, a useful stump remover, which nobody cares about.
But put them together and you get gunpowder, which if on page 84 (or any other page) you'd called out would get everybody sniffing around.
People need time to read and grok these things before they can understand the implications. Otherwise it's just a bunch of blind men feeling an elephant.
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Except that there have been various draft versions floating around for at least as long as they've been negotiating this. This isn't like the legislation passed after 9/11 where someone dusted off some of their totalitarian wet dream legislation that had been sitting in a drawer, only to be taken out when they needed some good fapping material, and stuck it under the noses of everyone in Congress who voted on it pretty much sight unseen.
So there are at least a few unfortunate staffers working for different
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2700 page bills are one of the reasons why Congresspeople have staffs. The notion that "nobody knows whats in it" is only another ploy to make it simpler to pass bad laws (which short, microtargeted, underspecified bills usually are) while delaying better ones. If your Congressperson doesn't know all about this bill that they need to know by now with all the lobbyists, staff, and other Congresspeople's staff pouring over it, he or she doesn't listen to anyone else, is incompetent in hiring staff, or is just
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And lets not forget that changes are proposed up to the last minute, leaving little if any time for a thorough review. Now, imagine there's also another layer in the process where everyone involved in maintaining the code has their own list of modules and features t
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The problem is not lack of time to read the bill, the problem is that the politicians voting on it don't WANT to read the bill.
Even given a year to mull it over they wouldn't read it. They will either vote along party lines or based on the orders of some major donor, who probably wrote half the bloody thing anyway.
Not the government (Score:2)
The government isn't tracking shit even based on the blurb. They're using data that's already being collected by Google, Apple, and others.
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Everyone benefits from roads and should pay. (Score:3)
It's an absurd idea that only vehicle owners should pay for the roads which enable modern civilization. If you don't own a car and take mass transit everything you eat, wear, the devices you own, the lot move by road.
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But the tax is factored into the cost of everything we eat, wear or use. The bus fare is partially used to cover the taxes on the bus and the bus operator's business.
Excise tax (Score:3)
Once upon a time, there was a federal excise tax on tires. At one time, it was based on the weight of the tire. The law was changed, and only heavy truck tires were taxed. Then *that* changed, and the rate was based on the load capacity of the truck tire. Info from https://www.everycrsreport.com... [everycrsreport.com]
Something similar could be introduced, without needing to intrude into personal driving habits. Even EVs need tires, and the vehicles that put the most stress on the roads use tires that would be taxed the most. Yeah, used tires, yadda-yadda-yadda. Used tires are only a small fraction of the tires sold, and the tax would have been paid at the original sale.
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So now a set of cheapies runs you a grand. And you've incentivized the type of people who skid around on rubber that should have been retired thousands of miles ago to try to squeeze even more blood from that stone. I'm sure this will end in no tears...
Don't penalize safety-critical maintenance.
Long Trips (Score:2)
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All the privacy we leak, why care now? (Score:2)
Is this one of the reasons the bill just stalled? (Score:2)
So simple... (Score:2)
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Funny how republicans only care about spending when a democrat is in office. Meanwhile in reality https://www.newsweek.com/under... [newsweek.com]