Thread: There you go - a tax on mileage! - What about the Illegals?

New Jersey drivers could one day find themselves paying tax on every mile they drive in the Garden State.

As more and more hybrids take to the roads, transportation experts fear the state gasoline tax won't be enough over the next 25 years to cover road repairs. That has led state officials to seek alternatives.

The mileage tax, suggested in the North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority's 25-year plan released last month, could be used to replace the per-gallon tax on gasoline.

Satellites could be used to track vehicles as they crisscross the state. An in-car computer could wirelessly transmit mileage data to gas pumps that would calculate the tax.

There are significant technological and social hurdles - including privacy concerns - that would have to be solved before such a system is put in place. Still, transportation planners are intrigued.

"It's being looked at seriously because everyone recognized that this is a problem that's on the horizon," NJTPA spokesman Mark Solof said. "Within 10 to 15 years, the gas tax just isn't going to yield enough money to support infrastructure repair and maintenance."

Next year, Oregon will run a pilot program to evaluate such a system. New Jersey and other state officials nationwide plan to watch it closely.

Instead of being charged Oregon's 24-cent fuel tax, about 300 volunteers in Portland will pay a tax of 1.2 cents per mile. Satellites and electronic odometers will be used to track their mileage and apply the tax.

"Gas taxes just won't work; even if you keep increasing them, you will be forever behind," said Jim Whitty, the Oregon Department of Transportation official heading the state's experiment, the first in the nation.

"Everybody's making guesses as to when that will happen. It's not known, really. All we know is it's going to happen at some point and we have to be prepared."

Oregon officials want to be ready in a decade or so in case they have to start moving away from the gas tax, Whitty said.

Federal transportation officials - who are paying for most of the $3 million study - rely on an 18.4-cent federal gas tax to dole out highway grants.

Oregon's pilot program, scheduled to begin next spring, will outfit volunteers' vehicles with satellite tracking equipment that will count the number of miles driven within the state's boundaries.

Gas stations participating in the program will bill those volunteers under a customized system in which the mileage data are passed on to the pump wirelessly. The regular gasoline tax will be waived and motorists will be taxed on the miles driven since their last fill-up.

Whitty said the system also could tax at a higher rate for driving in congested zones or on busy highways and for driving during peak traffic times. Similar congestion pricing is now used at the Hudson River crossings, where drivers are charged more during peak periods.

And higher rates could be applied to gas guzzlers, so that motorists who drive fuel-efficient cars are not penalized under the new system.

But the prospect also has raised concerns that motorists will be surrendering personal liberties.

Whitty said the Oregon experiment will use GPS equipment that does not send out signals telling some Big Brother-like machine where it is. Rather, he said, it receives only satellite signals used to determine whether or not the car is in the state or in a certain traffic zone.

New Jersey's transportation chief isn't embracing the idea, at least not yet.

Transportation Commissioner Jack Lettiere said predictions of the gas tax's demise may be premature and that the privacy and fairness questions are significant obstacles.

"To say that we're in an emergency and to say we have to look at this right away, I don't necessarily buy that," he said. Lettiere, president of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, said he also sees no quick movement toward the kind of fuel efficiency that would make the gas tax insufficient.

He noted that fuel efficiency in the United States has declined over the past two decades from 22.1 mpg to 20.8 mpg.

"Folks are going out saying we have to do this because the motor-fuels tax is no longer viable, but that is a myth," Lettiere said. "The efficiency of the entire national fleet has gone down."

The money being raised by New Jersey's gas and diesel taxes also has continually gone up during the past several years as sport-utility vehicles proliferated and the population increased.

The state collected $566 million from motor fuels taxes - up 12 percent from 2000, according to figures from the state Treasury Department.

Even so, New Jersey transportation officials are now facing a gas tax crisis. The Transportation Trust Fund is more than $6 billion in debt, the gas tax hasn't been increased in two decades and state officials continue their longtime habit of siphoning gas tax revenues to pay for operating costs.

Unless the state taxes, now at 14.5 cents per gallon, are increased or other revenues are found, road construction projects could be sidelined next summer.

Still, many experts are looking beyond the present crisis to a day when taxing gasoline just doesn't cut it anymore, when ever-increasing oil prices and better technology prompt motorists to trade in today's gas-guzzling SUVs for tomorrow's hybrid or hydrogen-powered vehicles.

Whether it's 10 years or 30 years, transportation planners say the country's fuel consumption is going to shift, and the nation's transportation officials need to start thinking about other revenue sources.

"Something different than what we're doing now, I think, is coming," said Jeffrey Zupan, a senior fellow on transportation with the Regional Plan Association in New York, which has begun studying alternative funding sources. "At some point, we're going to wake up to the idea that we can't keep buying Hummers that get 10 miles per gallon."

How exactly will the illegals be taxed for every mile they drive? If they had to get this technology installed on their car maybe they will round up the illegals when they go get their RFID mileage tracker sticker.

Nah, they will just give the illegals an exemption after all they are just hardworking people who are poor and trying to support their families so we shouldn't burden them with this additional tax.

The American people will pick up the slack just like always. Now shut up and pay your gasoline tax and your mileage tax.

So much for buying a hybrid or electric car to save money on the rising cost of gas! I knew those jackasses in government would find a way to screw the American people out of even more of the money they earn.

I think electronic funds from the US to another country should be taxed at a 50% rate for anyone who cannot prove they are legal. The revenues should be applied to DEPORTING ILLEGALS INSTEAD OF HOLDING THEM and THE HIRING OF MORE BORDER PATROL AGENTS!

President Bush you are a disgrace to us legals!

I think electronic funds from the US to another country should be taxed at a 50% rate for anyone who cannot prove they are legal. The revenues should be applied to DEPORTING ILLEGALS INSTEAD OF HOLDING THEM and THE HIRING OF MORE BORDER PATROL AGENTS!

Great idea! I'm all for that

Gosh! Aren't they wonderful!! They've thought of something ELSE to TAX!!Since they've thought of it they will most likely add it to the list of taxes.

Someone had to lie awake lots of nights to think up this one.

RR

if they would close the borders and deport the "illegal aliens" they catch instead of "catch and release" -- there wouldn't be so much wear and tear on our highways ... but as usual, the "aliens" will get a free ride at the expense of the Citizens . . .


NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION --- the citizens are the 'unrepresented'

As George CArlin said, "By the time you get out of Jersey, I need a break job. Now, they are wanting to tax the poor higher tax bracket legal immigrants and american citizens. on mileage? Sheesh. Like George Lopez said in his comedy, " That 20,000,000 statistical number of illegal hispanics can't be accurate because we don't open the door. Folks, this is true. My ex-boyfriend's sisters -in- law(non english speaking mestizo ones) would never answer the door-sometimes causing problems for some of the family members who were waiting on visits from employers(due to not having a telecommunication device) at their brother/father's residence. Most of the brothers in the family married primative type mestizos from Acapulco, Monterey, Jalisco etc. I knocked one day and could see my boyfriends oldest brother's wife, looking out through the curtain but would not answer the door. How primative is that? I actually would freak them for revenge by knocing harder and saying, "Es la migra" immigration. Ahora!!! (now) or get one of my cousins to do it. Chileans enjoy psychologically putting fear of Mexican illegals, especially after hearing that their spanish(castillian from the pais viejo(mother country of spanish), Spain, that we are speaking wrong and Mexican spanish is correct. They claim, chileans speak old spanish because of how proper we are. We call everyone Usted(maam, sir) Mexicans think you are only supposed to use the that pronoun when talking to your grandparents(old people) The same people who think "Monde". means what. I lived between a family of Illegal Mexican immigrants who used to call my landlord and complain because I was wearing a bikini top and jogging pants while mowing., and because I had a 9 foot albino burmese python whom they claim was trying to eat their kids. Correct me if I am wrong, but pythons only eat what they can swallow and I know there was no way they could have swallowed those two 120 lb daughters. They thought I was a satanist and were upset because they did not get invited to my get together I had for my grandmother before she went to Chile. That and my neighbors did not even look at them. They poisoned my dog-my 6 week old heidelberg shepherd, they would never allow their kids to go beyond my doorway. I would invite them in but they would say, No my mom won't let me. Oh, I had fun with that family. I was educating their 13 year old in proper castillian. I am pretty sure they were illegal. Their oldest daughter had a great sense of humor. I could tease her by making her say castillian words and telling her, "I am not a mexican, and even if I understood, I dont respond to words that are made up. The family of course like most, used their kids to interpret-and thought that because I too was spanish, that I wanted to hang with them, and even though I know most of them understood english and I spoke and understood propler castillian, they would try to use the poor kids to talk through me. I can still not understand why Cinco demayo is celebrated amongst the primative in latin america. Most of the educated hispanics would never celebrate it. They say, "why would I celebrate a holiday where a mestizo, primative, violent, dictator surrendered to the Texans .

Quote:
I think electronic funds from the US to another country should be taxed at a 50% rate for anyone who cannot prove they are legal. The revenues should be applied to DEPORTING ILLEGALS INSTEAD OF HOLDING THEM and THE HIRING OF MORE BORDER PATROL AGENTS!

By Luis Alonso Lugo
ASSOCIATED PRESS

8:51 p.m. September 24, 2003

NEW YORK – Money sent from Mexican workers in the United States to their families back home has reached a record $12 billion in 2003, Mexican President Vicente Fox said Wednesday.

Remittances "are our biggest source of foreign income, bigger than oil, tourism or foreign investment," Fox told reporters after a meeting with Mexican-American businessmen.

That would be a tidy sum back in the treasury to pay for schools, medical care and the other programs sinking under the weight of the illegals![/quote]