Dumb Idea of the Week: Repealing the Gas Tax Because Too Many People Drive Priuses

The truck is also using a lot more gallons per mile.

I do agree with your intent, however. Tax by road wear.

 

This Governor is not thinking. He wants to do away with state gas tax but increase sales tax and increase only Hybrid registration tax $100. How absurd. His state gas tax has not been increased since 1986.

Maybe he should outsource to private companies road maintenance and leave the tax alone. Perhaps they can do it cheaper than state gov.

If you can't pay the bills don't increase the tax lower the expense. Dah

 

Raise gas taxes, but MUST HAVE ACCOUNTABILITY! It's foolish to raise fees on green cars, then people will stop buying them. All this push to make more green cars, the billions already wasted on green technology, and they want to tax them above and beyond the normal average car is ridiculous.

 

Increased Taxes are on the upswing in America.
The governor needs to take a chill pill and find a better solution to the problem than raising sales tax to maintain roads and an obvious attack on the Green Vehicles which is nothing more than nuisance and has no monetary benefit. The car registration money raised could not maintain a mile of Virginia roads.

 

That is not clear at all. First those private companies are unlikely to be big enough to maintain the whole state. They would need more equipment for example. Well, they could buy it cheap from the government who is going out of that business. The company would then have one huge customer, who would have one company big enough to do the job. So the gov is back in a monopoly situation again, except that they have taken a huge loss on their capital investments. The private company has NO incentive to reduce the price just like the government didn't. The real trouble is that there is no one for whom the money means anything.

 

Come on dude. So they split the contract up among many vendors. Not to difficult. The problem with Gov is they just don't do it cheap. I rather them set it out to bid to the lowest vendor who can deliver on cost and quality. Look my friend stop protecting the old guard that no longer works. You have a choice, pay more taxes which will reduce your take home pay and less $ for you to invest in your future or start the process of Gov acting like private enterprise and delivering quality and a low cost to it's customers you and I.

I'm sick to my stomach with all these tax increases and I'm suprized more people do not feel like I do.

 

Sales tax or consumption tax is no big deal on the rich although they don't like it. But on the poor and middle class it is an unfair burden. I purchased a car in 2012 and paid over $3,000 in sales tax. How sick is that? I rather have that $3,000 in my hands and open a IRA and buy a Vanguard Small Cap ETF (VBR) and watch my investment grow. My investment will help create private sector jobs and the more people working the more people paying taxes and maybe the sales tax %can be lowered and everyone benefits. I also expect my money will go up and down but increase in value if given enough time and a robust economy and that is part depends on Gov releasing the Shackels on the tax burden. Sales tax once it is paid you will never see that $ again POOF gone in a NY minute.

 

As it happens most of the local road maintenance around me is done by private contractors. It still comes out of my taxes, and it is still too expensive. You do know those private contractors you love are getting paid with your tax dollars right? And the government has no more incentive to pay them LESS than when they were paying government employees right? Remember those $10,000 hammers people complained about, made by a private contractor. You have shown no reasons why private contractors are going to be cheaper. Let's say I contend that they will be more expensive. I could repeat all your arguments back to you and they will be just as convincing.

Government is NOT private enterprise. Many of the things that it provides would NEVER be provided by private enterprise at any price. Take the Post Office as an example. The cheapest UPS package is around $5 in the US only. The USPS delivers a letter anywhere in the world for roughly 50 cents. If congress manages to kill the post office, what are you going to be paying to deliver a letter, and could you get anyone to do it?

If you remove the taxes spend on transportation how much would ALL your taxes go down? 3% (including your share of corporate taxes paid in commodity prices).

 

Dude Gov required Union wage. Hey I'm not knocking Union Here and Now. But If the work gous out to bid and the lowest bidder is Union or Not Union as long as it comes in low cost and quality work the tax payer benefits. In some areas work that was done by City pensioned workers was outsourced to private workers and cost savings is 30%.

 

Argument by anecdote.

 

Dude the Post Office is losing Billions of tax payer money. UPS is making a profit and they offer a pension. Hard to compare them since UPS is mostly parcel delivery with an overnight letter delivery service and the Post Office is mostly letter with some Parcel. Post office needs to cut expenses by lowering to 5 or 4 day a week mail delivery and close redudent offices and consolidate. It may want to outsource some of it's routes. Think about this when was the last time you mailed a letter perhaps a Birthday card or Christas card., Today we send emails and pay bills electronicaly. Post office needs to move quicker to reduce expenses and lower service delivery.

 

Nothing wrong with government funding construction of roads by private companies. That happens all the time. In many cases there is as much corruption in the bidding. It is a system like cable television that leads to just a handful of large firms, so it is difficult to believe there are huge savings. The roads in disrepair though can not be simply privatized and citizens that paid for them kicked off and forced to pay a new toll or fee. There is just one guy that owns the bridge between detroit and canada and he gets to collect and keep the fee. He ran a large add campaign to try to stop Canada from paying for a competing bridge.

Most people don't like taxes. Road taxes vary from state to state though. In virginia where this bad idea came from, gas taxes are low, and they want to raise sales tax and create a special dumb Prius tax to make up for the shortfall. In virgina the solution is to raise the gas tax, it would still be less expensive than California.

From the federal government's point of view gas taxes are very very low. They haven't gone up since 1993, which means adjusted for inflation and better fuel economy of cars it has gone down a great deal. But its not magic, congress just adds the shortfall to the deficit.

In fact for over 99% of those of us that pay income tax, federal taxes have gone down from pre-2003 levels. The big problem federally is that while tax rates have fallen, spending has drastically increased. That spending needs to come down, but federal road spending is not much of the budget. What you really have to complain about is California taxes and state and federal spending.
State Gasoline Tax Rates, as of January 1, 2012 | Tax Foundation

You spend 49 cents per gallon, while Texans pay 20 cents a gallon. Texas gas tax is low to pay for the roads we need, but it doesn't need to go all the way up to California rates. California gets hit with a double whammy on fuel prices. Its regulators have made it so refined products are unprofitable to make out of state, so that you get extra fuel price spikes based on poor regulation. The governor acted during the last spike to reduce these regulations, but more spikes are coming in the future.

 

I dont know about that, City of chitcago sold the parking meters to a private company and now is paying the price, along with thousands of drivers who have to pay the daily fees which keep going up.

 

Yes, its really bad. I also was on the tollway when I was visiting family at thanksgiving. Drove my brother's car, with its speedpass so didn't pay the tolls, but they are really high. Your state gas tax is 39 cents so those toll roads did not result in lower fuel taxes.

They made our parking meters electronic and increased the hours. The city collects the fees, but they seem to be going to stupid spending. The rates aren't high, but the limited hours forces people into pay lots. Since they are all credit card now, the city can easily start charging more whenever they feel like it.

 

Gov is like a enigma it will take the shirt off your back but don't mess with there pension and healthcare retirement benefits.

 

UPS makes use of the Post office for some routes. Without the USPS, some areas simply wouldn't get packages delivered. Part of the USPS problem is that congress has put onerous requirements on their budget. How profitable would UPS be if they had to fund pensions for workers not born yet?

Out sourcing only appears to take account of the lower pay to the private worker. The arguement for ignores that you have now added a third party in the form of the private company management that is looking to make a profit.

Most road projects are already put out to bid for private companies. Government requirements on the bidding companies, like the workers be legal residents, is a good thing.

 

I'm not a Post Office expert. But why not have them get a matching 401K and Social Security like every one else. As far as mail delivery frankly what do I get but advertising and a few bills I have not signed up for paperless billing yet. Geting mail dilevered 3 or 4 days a week is OK with most Americans I'm sure. Parcel delivery should be every day since business needs this. I'm sure UPS, DHL and the others do the majority of that. This is a new world and either you sink or swim and USPS needs to start swiming. No different than any family, we all need to live within our means. You get paid, you pay the bills, you save alittle, you invest a little, but you can't operate in the RED or the day of reckoning will come and you lose things.

 

Just a FYI if you got paid today you will notice a little less on the take home pay compared to last year. That is because you are paying more taxes. How much fun is that? In California some think tank said more people are recieving Social Assistance than who are working. The Horror. Time to talk about other stuff. Something more positive.

 

If you figure most people work some 30 years, and then are retired for close to 20 years that horrible stat you are so worried about does not sound so surprising.

But then, I do not bother with goofy think tanks -- aka political propaganda outlets.

 

Don't know the particulars of the USPS retirement system, but even if it was less than what the other guys give, having to fund the next projected 75 years of it now would still be a burden on their finances. We expect it to be self sufficient, but the USPS can't be while having to operate under mandates handed down from congress that no private business would consider implementing.

UPS, DHL, and the like do much of the parcel delivery. They also use the the USPS to deliver their packages to some locals. Without the USPS, those places would stop getting packages or rates will go up. Like how junk mail underwrites the cost of first rate mail, USPS service underwrites the private delivery companies service.

Back to the OP, much of the road work is already done by private companies. So there is little savings to be found in out sourcing the work. Installing longer lasting road surfaces could lower the day to day cost of maintenance, but we usually don't want to pay the higher up front cost. Or there isn't the cash for it. That's the problem states are facing with a growing fleet of more efficient cars.

So revenue needs to be brought back up. Gas taxes are the simplest way. With growing numbers of high mpg cars, plus plug ins, it won't be enough in the future.