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Federal vmt tax10/24/2022 ![]() ![]() Road and bridge decisions can be made at the state level where infrastructure is used.Ī federal miles-traveled tax would only further centralize infrastructure decisions in Washington. While Democrats complain that the federal gas tax hasn’t been raised since 1994, thirty-six states have raised their gas taxes over the last decade, often doing so with revenue-neutral proposals. State and local governments already account for three-quarters of highway and road funding and are maintaining the same levels of revenue available for infrastructure that they have since the 1980s. It has been suggested that over a longer period of time, a substantially higher fuel tax (increases as high as 54 percent have been proposed by some) would create incentives for higher mileage or. But recent studies agree that such a move would be politically unpopular. Do Americans really want IRS agents knocking on their door demanding to see the mileage of their car?Īt best, a VMT is an overly technocratic idea when the clear option is to allow state and local governments to lead the way. Raising the federal fuel tax is one alternative to a VMT fee system. Imagine the expansion of odometer fraud if the financial incentive of a lower reading expanded from the used car market to every American’s tax bill, especially when odometer correction devices can be easily purchased online.Įnforcement of such a system would require a dramatic increase of staff at the Internal Revenue Service to audit the odometers of the 289.5 million vehicles registered across the nation. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimates that more than 450,000 cars are sold each year with false odometer readings. While odometer readings would reduce privacy concerns, it would likely incentivize wide-scale fraud and abuse from vehicle owners. The alternative to GPS tracking would be annual odometer readings done at yearly inspections. constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures of evidence. A federal GPS tracking program would be constitutionally dubious as the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in 2012 that the placement of a device on a vehicle without a warrant and using it to monitor the vehicle’s movements was covered by U.S. The government would know every time you exceed the speed limit, run through a red light or illegally park. The first method would require installing a GPS device in every vehicle that would track both vehicle location and miles traveled while transmitting the data to the federal government. In addition to raising taxes, the two options for implementing a VMT would both require significant administrative burdens while growing the size and role of government. ![]()
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