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by legitster 35 days ago
Gas has a nice linear relationship with road usage. (Farms can currently buy tax exempt gas and diesel explicitly for this reason).

A lot of states have experimented with mileage-based tracking for EVs but there is no realistic way to do it that's not super fiddly or privacy invasive.
1 comments
philipkglass 35 days ago
Couldn't states take an odometer reading at tag renewal time and charge based on distance traveled? It wouldn't perfectly capture usage of in-state roads, but it should be close enough on average, it reuses existing mechanisms, and it doesn't require any sort of location tracking.
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legitster 35 days ago
Individuals would have to track miles out of state or off of public roads.

It sounds like it would be easy but states would open themselves up to endless nickel-and-diming or fraud.

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philipkglass 35 days ago
No, I mean just charge based on the odometer reading. Don't offer exemptions. The state where the car is registered collects the tax for every mile driven. It would lead to some mistakes in the small scale (what if I live in northern Oregon but do most of my driving in southern Washington, or vice versa?) but it seems like a serviceable alternative for the macro-scale problem of how states can replace the funding from gas taxes. And it does so without the expense or privacy invasions of schemes like automatic plate tracking or in-car GPS tracking.
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seanmcdirmid 35 days ago
Washington state has a pilot to do this, it will be mandatory in a few years.
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