Yahoo! News – State Lawmakers Consider Calif. Mileage Tax: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger thinks that highway construction and repair should be paid for by a tax on the miles Californians drive, not the amount of gas they buy.
Yeah, they float this idea here in Oregon from time to time. The situation is that the gas tax (per gallon) is not bringing in the cash it once did, because more people are purchasing hybrids and more fuel-efficient cars, and therefore buying fewer gallons of gas. So, rather than raise the gasoline tax to make up for the shortfall, the idea is to tax dirvers on a per-mile rather than per-gallon basis.
The lousy thing is that this punishes drivers of hybrids and rewards drivers of Hummers (I wonder why Schwarzenegger is behind this?). To drive 600 miles, the hyrbid driver needs 10 gallons of gas, the Hummer driver needs 60 gallons. The current tax forces some accountability for the SUV drivers’ waste of resources, which is especially relevant considering the massive tax breaks that Hummer owners get when they first purchase the vehicle.
Some try to argue that a mileage tax is more fair, because the money from the tax funds road projects. If you drive more miles, you should pay for more road repairs. This argument ignores the fact that a 8,000 pound Hummer does far more damage to the roads than a featherweight little Prius. Not to mention the hundred-fold damage done by semi-trucks.
