Below is the latest little effort to make up for the foreseen decline of the gas tax as cars get better on mileage and people drive less...

The Rube Goldberg Gas Tax

The proposed “Transportation Opportunities Act” would mandate a vehicle miles traveled (VMT) tax that’s calculated by installing electronic equipment on each car and at filling stations. VMT calculation and payment would take place electronically every time you buy gas at the pump. Buying and maintaining the equipment would undoubtedly be at a cost to service stations and vehicle owners, and non-compliance will likely result in hefty fines. The plan is a part of an administration’s draft proposal obtained by Transportation Weekly.

Call me a pragmatist, but if the Obama administration wants to make up lost revenue because people are being more energy efficient, why not just increase the gas tax? The federal excise tax on gasoline is already 18.4 cents per gallon and 24.4 cents per gallon for diesel fuel. Increasing this tax fixes the lost revenue problem. It’s a simple solution that doesn’t require that we all buy expensive equipment for our cars to essentially pay a new gas tax. 

I believe VMT should be called the Rube Goldberg Gas Tax because while it’s objective is the same as the gas tax, the way it collects revenue is extremely complex, costly and cumbersome. It’s understandable that the administration wishes to avoid the stigma of increasing gas prices when the price of gas is about $4 per gallon, but VMT is so close to a gas tax that it’s going to be called that anyway.

The administration’s answer to falling federal revenue from lower energy use should be higher energy taxes. This encourages even less energy use, which is in line with our national energy policy, and it maintains revenues without creating more forms of federal taxation.