Proposed tax on fuel efficient vehicles?

[drainoil]

Oregon Considers Per-Mile Tax On Fuel-Efficient Vehicles | The Truth About Cars

[jakobnev]

Time to start using the <BLINK>-tag on the search function.

[brucepick]

I was wondering when reduced overall fuel consumption would finally provoke a response by government. Oy.

Heavier cars cause more road deterioration than lighter ones. I say, rather than multiply vehicle weight by miles driven to determine a tax amount, just let the cents-per-gallon taxes continue.

There has to be an up side to conserving fuel - that last thing our government (which is us, actually) should do is penalize fuel conservation!

[freebeard]

653 comments on Slashdot.

Out-of-state travel?

axle weight?

toll roads???

SALES TAX??!?

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

It's unbelievable how they only care about taxes instead of consider the benefits from a lower dependence on foreign energy sources.

[brucepick]

Those Americans who hate taxes fully believe that government can do almost nothing efficiently. They think those responsibilities should all be taken care of by the "private sector" instead. So the benefits of paying taxes are invisible to those people.

Um, don't count me among them. I'm proud to pay taxes.

[Xist]

The IRS has 106,000 employees and has a budget of $12.5 trillion. You don't think that can be improved?

[t vago]

I fail to see the problem.

No, seriously. I was stationed in CT for a while, and while I was there, they charged me an annual property tax on my car. Far heftier than $100, too. And, it was a traditional gasoline engine'd car!

[niky]

Originally Posted by Xist

The IRS has 106,000 employees and has a budget of $12.5 trillion. You don't think that can be improved?

If they did, they would be richer than the rest of the world.

IRS FY 2012 Budget Proposal Summary

The IRS budget is around 13.3 billion. Collections (gross) are around 2.3 trillion per annum.

The cost of collection, thus, is potentially less than 1 percent of the total tax revenue.

Figure about 6 billion of that is for standard wages, then about 7 billion for operations.

I don't have statistics for current taxpayers, but that's approximately 1,500 tax returns for every employee... and not all 106,000 of those people will be doing paperwork. Many will be doing legwork, collections, internal audit, legal work, investigation, miscellaneous office work, etcetera... so the ratio of accolunts to accountants is likely much higher, around 3,000 or 5,000 to 1.

Hey... making money costs money.

[Xist]

I stand corrected. I confused a comma and a period.

It sounded high...