Readers: Mileage tax? How about we scrap road taxes altogether?
My column last Sunday touting the virtues of a vehicle miles traveled (VMT) tax for Illinois drew more thoughtful and constructive responses from readers than any of my columns in memory.
Briefly, the idea is that since politicians haven’t had the will for nearly 30 years to raise per-gallon gas taxes and cars are getting better and better gas mileage, we need a new way of funding the infrastructure repair and construction that gas taxes helped pay for.
Putting GPS devices into cars and charging by the mile, as is being tried in other places, is an imperfect but creative and flexible solution that deserves serious thought. Democratic gubernatorial candidate J.B. Pritzker has been roundly attacked for merely suggesting Illinois “should look at” testing such a tax and has since been running like a scalded dog away from that suggestion, but he was onto something.
I have answers — not necessarily rejoinders! — for most of the points readers raised.
■ Sticking with a per-gallon gas tax is better because it rewards those who buy and drive fuel-efficient cars that benefit the environment.
True, but raising it to necessary levels — we’d have to double it to 38 cents just to keep up with inflation since the per-gallon state tax was last raised to 19 cents in 1990 — would fall hardest on low-income drivers and exempt those with the means to buy electric cars.
■ For a government agency to track and record citizens as they drive would be an Orwellian invasion of privacy.
Most of us willingly carry tracking devices with us at all times as it is. Our cellphones leave digital breadcrumbs wherever we go in the physical world, and our browsers record our travels through cyberspace.
Many of us also enjoy the economy and convenience of tollway transponders that preserve partial driving records.
Still, I get the reluctance some have to 24/7 vehicular tracking that can’t be disconnected, even if the government promised to purge the records after 30 days and hide them under a cloak of confidentiality similar to the IRS privacy laws that have kept President Donald Trump’s tax records secret all these years.
To gain public acceptance, a VMT tax system would have to contain an opt-out provision allowing for billing based on annual odometer readings.
■ To make up for gas taxes being lost to fuel-efficient vehicles, why not just charge the owners an extra annual registration fee to make up the difference?
I’d worry that this would discourage the purchase of high-mileage cars, cars that could theoretically be given extra per-mile tax benefits under a GPS-based system.
■ What about interstate traffic? Those who commute from northwest Indiana or southern Wisconsin to jobs in the Chicago area would skate on a VMT tax if only cars registered in Illinois were required to pay it. Yet they would still be using our roads and bridges.
True. If VMT taxes don’t spread to nearly every state, they’ll always be subject to the freeloader problem.
■ Straight gas taxes are simple and, because they’re hidden in the pump price, relatively painless. Tracking and then billing individual motorists based on data fed into a central system by GPS devices would be costly, complex and provocative.
Costly to set up, certainly, though in the long run probably no more complex than computerized tollway billing using creditcard accounts. The line-item amount might be galvanizing or outrageous, but it would have the virtue of being transparent.
■ With GPS devices sending the government a continuous stream of information, we might as well be under the eye of ticketissuing speed cameras at every moment. There’ll be nothing to stop police from fining us for every transgression.
Nothing but public pressure. Which seems to have worked so far in preventing toll roads from spitting tickets at cars that get from one plaza to the next too fast for posted speeds.
■ Why not scrap the GPS idea and simply require everyone to get an odometer reading at plate-renewal time, then charge by the miles driven and the size and weight of the vehicle? Such a system could also include special breaks for low-income and rural residents, and for vehicles used primarily by charitable institutions.
A whole new bureaucracy would need to be created to record odometer readings, and such a system wouldn’t be fair to those who travel a lot out of state — most of the miles on my car these days are trips to visit family in Michigan and West Virginia, for instance.
But my guess is that if we ever do get a VMT tax it will at least start with a nonGPS version like this.
■ You liberals always think of ways to raise taxes! Why not cut spending for once?
This response wasn’t particularly constructive, but it was common. As usual, however, such input lacked suggestions of program and service cuts sufficient to keep our roadways in good shape.
■ Why not charge a hefty increase in the tax on new tires instead? Tire wear is proportional to and a proxy for miles driven.
A substantial tire tax would create a number of perverse incentives, such as rewarding motorists for driving on old, bald tires and incentivizing them to wait until they’re out of state to replace their tires. The public safety and business implications for this idea appear grim.
■ Why should we charge road, gas or mileage taxes at all? Infrastructure — like K-12 education, parks, police protection etc. — is a public good. Even those who hardly drive at all benefit from the network of pavement that keeps our stores stocked and our service vehicles moving smoothly. User-pays tax systems don’t adequately assess the shared benefits. Roads should be funded through other conventional taxes, not a system that tries to turn every street into a tollway.
I found variations on this argument to be highly persuasive. If we were not living Trump’s America where it’s never OK to admit you were wrong, I might just change my mind on the VMT tax.
That which creates and provides for the general good ought to be paid for out of general funds.
On behalf of my most thoughtful readers, I bequeath this idea to J.B. Pritzker free of charge.
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