imo, going by vehicle miles is less of a consumption based tax. Large vehicles which cause the bulk of road damage use far more miles per gallon, and their consumption is more fairly represented this way. This tax distributes burden on low consumers in it's basic form.
I guess something needs to fund all these fucking toll roads.
So make a GVW fee schedule.
Fair disclosure: I don't drive a ton, so of course I'm all for reducing gas prices and making a benign odometer reading tax add on registration fees. In theory, anyway.
We all know that's not how this will go down. How it will go down is gas tax will be reduced on a 3 year 'trial period' for the new tax. Your first year will give you a tax break to 'pay' for the device. It will be capable of 'assisting law enforcement if they identify your vehicle is involved in a crime' but you'll find no more details. Everyone will moan and get over it because fuck you, if you're so innocent what do you have to hide???
Three years later the trial 'tax break' will expire, there will be a great deal of argument, blah blah, and both taxes will be in full effect, but most people will have gotten used to the new registration fees and gas prices go up and down all the time, so the 1 year incremental reapplication of the gasoline tax will seem innocuous to the average consumer. Then a story will leak about how the cops in a major city have a new service that allows them to store all the data from the system at all times for faster retrieval (IT'S FOR THE CHILDREN, ASSHOLE) but don't worry, because again, you've got nothing to hide, right??? Eventually it will begin to be used for more services like automated tolls like the transponder systems most states already use. Then cities with red-light and speed cameras will say it makes sense to just integrate them all. So at first, you'll only get tickets that are verified by camera and your GPS unit. Then a kid will die at a school crosswalk (THINK OF THE CHILDREN, RETARD) so they will expand it to cover 'high risk areas' where tickets will be generated just based on the GPS system.
Sometime between then and the point where all lighted intersections and major interstates become 'risk areas', studies by Redflex and GPS Transponders Co, Inc. will clearly show that THE LIVES OF CHILDREN MIGHT BE SAVED if we use the car tracking units to target those damned dirty lawbrea... I mean CHILD SLAYERS. Around this point another major bridge will collapse and a series of inquiries will go into the infrastructure problems of the Eisenhower Interstate System. State revenue from the system thus far, redirected to continue expanding the system and the Redflex contract, will be insufficient to cope with the declining condition of the roadways. Major appeals of CHILD SAVERS to the US Congress will push them to the point of considering a federal roadway tax to help offset the new SAVE THE CHILDREN ON THE HIGHWAY funding initiative, which will be distributed to states to fund improvements to interstate highways. Of course, most of the revenue for the first few years will have to cover the costs of creating the new fund, the bureaucracy to manage and maintain everything, the new federal inspection station system and of course into the companies that provide the new GPS devices for states which are not progressive enough to have already started using the system.
Ah, America.
