[2dollars27cents]

As others have mentioned, taxing efficient cars doesn't seem to make much sense. Maybe tax actual miles traveled instead? That would solve the problem of increasing efficiency and also decrease the value of loitering and cruising in-between pick-ups.

[jdhn]

I'm real curious as to how taxing miles travelled would work, especially if you travel between states. Would you have to keep track of how many miles you drove in State A and State B, and how would you pay State B if you lived in State A? Since we'd need to replace the federal fuel tax as well, would the federal government require states to hold yearly odometer inspections, or would you have to fill out a form on your yearly taxes stating how far you drove? I supposed that these questions could be solved by utilizing GPS, but I'm not sure I like the idea of the government tracking the movements of my vehicle.

[vidarh]

In Norway the use of GPS has been discussed for a few years, and as far I understand the newest solutions being discussed have been approved by the data privacy watchdog, which generally tends to be very negative to government surveillance.

There are many options there, at the cost of making audits/complaints harder, such as e.g. only keeping GPS traces for a very short time (or not at all), and gradually overwrite more and more details, such as coordinates, reducing time precision, and finally consolidate to amounts owed. Those settings could be left under the control of the car owner as well, or let you dump a signed record of the precise data if you as the owner suspect inaccuracies and want to collect evidence, and then allow you to wipe the details from the device and only leave aggregate numbers.

The point is if the device is tamper-proof enough, you don't need it to record your movements, you just need it to monitor your movements and location with sufficient precision to decide what amounts should be added to running totals of tax.

Of course there is a risk some governments will decide they'd really like more detailed records.

[amanaplanacanal]

There are experiments with this sort of system in my state in the US. In our case, the car owner signs up with a private firm that does the data collection and only reports the total distance driven to the government, not the actual locations.

I would assume that there is some law which requires the detailed data to be deleted, but I'm not sure about that.

[reaperducer]

I'm real curious as to how taxing miles travelled would work, especially if you travel between states.

Trucks have been doing it for years with transponders in the cabs. That's how when a semi fills up with fuel in one state and ends its trip in another state the state in between still gets some fuel tax to pay for road maintenance.

[seanmcdirmid]

That is on the table in Europe with real-time tolling based on miles driven.

[petre]

It would make sense to use a differentiated sales tax for car for hire services. That'd be proportional with usage. It would also tax people who don't have a car and externalize car taxes and maintainance costs by using these services. EU countries already do ths for things like food, books, accomodation and restaurant services. Usually the sales tax is smaller for these sectors.

[baddox]

If you want usage fees to be proportionate, I think you'd need to tax according to the maintenance costs caused by the vehicle per mile (eighteen wheelers cause vastly more road wear than cars). That's really all you need, except perhaps for some fixed cost per mile for the size of the vehicle, to tax congestion.

[seanmcdirmid]

You’d also want to discourage congestion with use taxes, as another commons tragedy.

[ummonk]

Wait, how would taxing miles traveled decrease the value of loitering between pick-ups?