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Oregon to test pay-per-mile idea as replacement for gas tax






PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Oregon is about to embark on a first-in-the-nation program that aims to charge car owners not for the fuel they use, but for the miles they drive.

The program is meant to help the state raise more revenue to pay for road and bridge projects at a time when money generated from gasoline taxes are declining across the country, in part, because of greater fuel efficiency and the increasing popularity of fuel-efficient, hybrid and electric cars.

Starting July 1, up to 5,000 volunteers in Oregon can sign up to drive with devices that collect data on how much they have driven and where. The volunteers will agree to pay 1.5 cents for each mile traveled on public roads within Oregon, instead of the tax now added when filling up at the pump.

Some electric and hybrid car owners, however, say the new tax would be unfair to them and would discourage purchasing of green vehicles.

"This program targets hybrid and electric vehicles, so it's discriminatory," said Patrick Connor, a Beaverton resident who has been driving an electric car since 2007.

State officials say it is only fair for owners of green vehicles to be charged for maintaining roads, just as owners of gasoline-powered vehicles do.

"We know in the future, our ability to pay for maintenance and repair... will be severely impacted if we continue to rely on the gas tax," said Shelley Snow with the Oregon Department of Transportation.

Other states are also looking at pay-per-mile as an alternative to dwindling fuel tax revenues.

Last year, California created a committee to study alternatives to the gas tax and design a pilot program; Washington state set money aside to further develop a similar program; and an Indiana bill directs the state to study alternatives and a test project.

While growing in popularity, electric vehicles and hybrids are still in the minority on American roads, even in a state as green-minded as Oregon. Of 3.3 million passenger cars registered in Oregon at the end of 2014, about 68,000 were hybrid, 3,500 electric and 620 plug-in hybrid. A decade ago, only 8,000 hybrids were registered.

However, fuel-economy for gas-powered vehicles has been increasing as technology is developed that addresses public concerns about greenhouse gas emissions and dependence on foreign oil.

Oregon is the only state to actually test-drive the pay-per-mile idea.

The gas tax provides just under half of the money in Oregon's highway fund, and the majority of the money in the federal Highway Trust Fund, of which Oregon receives a portion.

Oregon's share of the fuel tax over the past two decades has been mostly flat and in some years declined, state data show. In 2009, the Legislature raised the tax from 24 cents to 30 cents per gallon, but that's not enough to avert shortfalls, state officials said, because construction costs increase with inflation.

Oregon previously held two rounds of small-scale tests involving GPS devices to track mileage.

The current program, called OreGo, will be the largest yet and will be open to all car types. Of these, no more than 1,500 participating vehicles can get less than 17 miles per gallon, and no more than 1,500 must get at least 17 miles per gallon and less than 22 miles per gallon.

Volunteers will still be paying the fuel tax if they stop for gas. But at the end of the month, depending on the type of car they drive, they will receive either a credit or a bill for the difference in gas taxes paid at the pump.

Private vendors will provide drivers with small digital devices to track miles; other services will also be offered. Volunteers can opt out of the program at any time, and they'll get a refund for miles driven on private property and out of state.

After the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon raised concerns about privacy and government surveillance, the state built protections into the program, said ACLU's interim executive director Jann Carson.

Drivers will be able to install an odometer device without GPS tracking.

For those who use the GPS, the state and private vendors will destroy records of location and daily metered use after 30 days. The program also limits how the data can be aggregated and shared. Law enforcement, for example, won't be able to access the information unless a judge says it's needed.

"This is the government collecting massive amounts of data and we want to ensure the government doesn't keep and use that data for other purposes," Carson said.

The OreGo program is projected to cost $8.4 million to implement and is aimed to gauge public acceptance of the idea of charging motorists per mile of road they travel. It will be up to the Legislature to decide whether to adopt a mandatory road usage charge.

One of the biggest concerns will be whether a program like OreGo could actually discourage people from buying electric or hybrid vehicles.

Drive Oregon, an advocacy group for the electric-vehicle industry, supports the program because every driver should pay for road repairs, executive director Jeff Allen said. Still, he said, "The last thing we need to do right now is to make buying electric cars more expensive or inconvenient."



http://apnews.myway.com/image/20150520/304275199828-Oregon_Charging_Green_Vehicles_20150520.html?date=20150520&docid=us--oregon-charging_green_vehicles-eff38a74ea

How about we charge the legislators for every word that comes out of their mouth and every word of every bill they write

I think this will negatively affect the economy in ways that it won't be apparent in such a small sample size of this pilot program, but will become apparent if rolled out state-wide. Driving creates a lot of economic activity, especially for recreation. A gas tax is a hidden tax on driving, so people don't associate having a tax on how much they drive currently because the price is baked into the price at the pump, and I bet people don't even know how much of the gas price is state, federal, and local taxes currently. The price of gas is just the cost of driving, and taxes are known but not really a consideration. When you explicitly tie a specific rate of tax for each mile driven, that will cause the amount of miles driven to decrease, and those miles will come from discretionary driving- that is driving places people don't have to (like work) but choose to (like recreation). Suddenly, that extra trip to a local business or to sight see or road trips, all things that create economic activity, are decreased because of the overt extra tax associated with them, which depresses economic activity.

My own personal opinion is that states should pay for the things they need to pay for, but be up front about what the costs are, stop borrowing to balance bungets, and have a single tax rate on income or a VAT that represents all income the state receives. Enough of all these little hidden taxes everywhere.

The answer to taxes is simplification, because when people see how much government really costs and the state has to pay for things as it goes instead of borrowing, they will demand government be more efficient.

Yeah I find this whole thing pretty funny and now they're panicking where to get the extra money from but people are still paying huge premiums on their electricity so they're still getting their tax money from that. If they start taxing electric cars like this then it might not be worth it for the owners so they'll just go back to petrol powered cars.

That's how the lefty elite always tend to think, just like with that carbon credit bullcrap. I'm not saying that most republicans are much better, as they tend to find their creative ways at highway robbery, but at least the libertarian strain of them act seriously about curbing spending and thus making tax reductions possible. However, there are very few of them in varying levels of government because special interest groups conspire to elect their peeps that reward their friends and punish their enemies. Go figure that in this case the left is attempting to eat its own.

This is fascism at its best. I wasn't expecting that from Oregon. A black box in every car to tell the government what every driver is doing with his car. Europe's smarter. In Switzerland, there's a highway tax. It's just a small sticker you put on your windshield. You've got to buy the new one every year to be allowed to drive on the highways, and you'll get a fine if you get on a highway without it, but nobody records anything. That's not needed.

Nobody's concerned about privacy in Oregon? I'm really surprised.

Well right now, it's not a mandatory program. The only people participating are those who volunteered. It would be safe to assume that no, none of them have privacy concerns. Once they try to make this the mandatory program, you can expect the privacy concern argument to take a more prevalent role in the debate.

... Until a (US) liberal says it is good for the children, or not voting for it is racism or something...

 :)

Madness. What could be more simple than a gas tax?

If you do more miles you pay more. If you want a honking V8 you pay more.

No extra bureaucracy or Orwellian surveillance needed. Oh wait...

David Hastings is a rare American. This long-time hybrid car owner from Oregon wants to pay higher taxes for roads and bridges and says the current 30 cents per gallon state gas tax barely affects him.

"I've been free-loading on the highways for 20 years driving electric cars or hybrid cars, getting at least 40 miles to the gallon. So I haven't been paying my share," Hastings said.

Now, Hastings will pay more thanks to OReGO -- the first pay-by-the-mile program in the U.S.


http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/07/03/oregon-launches-program-to-tax-drivers-by-mile/

I'm a fan of use taxes, it's a fair way for people to pay for common services they use in proportion to how much they use it.

It's a bit funny but not surprise that people are complaining about this. When you change the way someone has to think about something, even when the result is about the same, there's opportunity for people feel the change is somehow making them worse off.

The article quotes the gas tax to be $0.30 per gallon. A 1.5 cent per mile tax would equal 30 cents a gallon if the car was getting 20 miles per gallon. The $0.015 per mile seems about right when you think about how many miles a tank of gas buys. I don't think the people of Oregon are paying more by paying per mile, however it's getting tax obligation back in line with use, which goes away with more fuel efficient vehicles. The alternative is deteriorating roads or tax hikes in other ways (i.e., local income taxes).

This isn't the big bad government trying to gouge people, it's about paying for common services based on use. This is an example of how taxes SHOULD be applied!

Truck drivers and cabbies should be taxed more than regular commuters?

If they use the roads more than regular commuters, absolutely. And they should also plan to pass some of that cost down to the people that ride in those cabs or transfer goods in those trucks.

Trucks cause much more wear to the roads comparing with light cars, therefore it is fair to tax them higher.

Bingo! The point is not to modernize the tax system, but to create another system of surveilance. Full control of everyone is coming. Thats what american goverment wants.

On the internet it's already hear! If you make one more post on here after reading my comment you're accepting that reality that nearly everything you do on the internet is tracked - not actively, no one is looking at "Cryptominer" (most likely), but the information is available.

Real madness. Instead of subsidising electric cars, they want to tax them more. And btw, gas guzzlers will end up paying the same tax as fuel efficient cars. Talk about misaligned incentives.
I would also love to see how they implement it (measure your miles, that is)

You should start by reading the article, there's a lot of comment on how Oregon plans to monitor this. And at a minimum, the state could required Odometer readings on tax returns and then audit a certain percentage.

Also, if gas guzzlers will end up paying the same tax as fuel efficient vehicles no one has a right to be upset about  it...how does that "mis-align incentives"? I don't think taxing fuel efficient cars by the miles is supposed to incentivize anyone, it's supposed to recapture tax revenue that's been lost due to lower volume of gas purchases.