I thought this meant you conducted the study... until I got to the end.
It's really a good way to handle road taxes, by *actual* usage instead of arbitrary fees. Seems like it would be a hassle to manage though (reporting and billing).
Probably what should happen is that your mileage gets reported annually by the shop that does the inspection. Then upon selling the vehicle there would be some sort of verification to ensure no one games the system.
For those living in South Carolina, that nuts. Probably people said the same thing when the gov't instituted property tax on real estate. The idea to me though that your car is taxed as "property" just seems greedy... they want to tax all the expensive property.
What's next though? Annual property tax on your wedding ring? What about people that have lots of expensive shoes? Property tax!!
"How many red bottoms do you own ma'am? Mind if we look in your closet to verify?"
As it happens, the better phase should have been that I
participated in a study. That, interestingly, included all the states up and down the East Coast. Um. A person in Virginia just posted a question about what appears to be a real, live application of that study. Here's the link to my post in that thread:
Virginia DMV Mileage Choice Program for Highway Use Fee
It's interesting. In the study, one had a choice, depending upon what kind of car one had. People with Teslas were invited to connect vehicle telmantics (through one's account at Tesla.com) to the study's back end. The study didn't track one's location, but it did pull mileage numbers every 30 days, then racked up a simulated charge. One would get an email once a month telling one how much one might get purportedly charged.
On the one hand, I kind of like the approach: Somehow, gotta keep the roads maintained. Right now that's with the gas tax which, in it's own way, is kind of fair: Got a big, heavy car that tears up the road? Then one presumably uses more gas, pays more taxes, and therefore pays one's fair share of the road maintenance. Got a light car that barely marks the pavement? Presumably that car uses less gas and tears up the pavement less. Drive far and wide all over the place? Use more gas, pay for more road maintenance.
The tricky bit is when one travels out of state. Drive through Kentucky? Get gas in Kentucky, pay for the roads one drives upon there.
The telemantics plus GPS (which the study hints about as a possibility) would work OK for that.
The problem: Privacy. Law enforcement and various legal maniacs would see a database full of this kind of data a treasure trove, not just for taxation, but other purposes as well. Not trying to raise a furor, but consider Texas: Some poor, benighted CIS woman with an ectopic pregnancy (read: certain death for both the fetus and woman) travels out of state to save her life. Rumors get out, and the state would dig out her travel to some abortion clinic somewhere and haul her into court for murder. Whee! Going further, one could see the State of Texas scanning the database for all residents of the state to see if any travel to known abortion clinics across the US.
Yes, I'm sure that there's people on this forum who would support such a prosecution. How about New York scanning the database for all New York cars that make trips to gun dealers across the US?
Or, better yet: Somebody made a trip that
seems to be going to one of these hot-wire places, but they're actually going to the McDonalds in the same plaza? Prosecuting individuals for Things They Didn't Do in the U.S. is a minor league sport supported by frothing DAs on whatever corner of the political spectrum they might happen to inhabit.
So, how are the people collecting this data going to protect it against maniac DAs who ask for warrants, maniac judges who issue those warrants, and our ever-present legislators with their, "But we need to protect the Children!" mantra. Jeez. That last. The magic words, "Child trafficking!" would appear and the US would immediately turn into a police state with everybody presumed guilty.
Oh, yeah: And our, "friends" at the various three-letter agencies who never saw a database like this that they couldn't resist mining, warrants be damned. Just say the words, "National Security!" and judges fold right, left, and center.
So, is there a way to collect such data for actual fair taxation purposes to keep the road repaired and
not deliver that data to All Third Parties? I'm not betting on it.
