It appears that the Democrats plan to tax essentially everything that moves, or at least they are paving the ground to do so.
There is a proposed pilot program for a mileage tax tucked away in the infrastructure bill.
The U.S. Senate passed President Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill with bipartisan support from 19 Republicans, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). Buried in the 2,700 page infrastructure package is a pilot program for a vehicle mileage tax.A vehicle mileage tax, or vehicle miles traveled fee, would charge motorists a fee based on how many miles they drive. Simply put, if you drive a vehicle, you would pay money to the government for every mile you drive. The time period can vary, but is typically a vehicle miles travel fee is measured in a one year period. A vehicle mileage traveled fee can be used to raise revenue for transportation and infrastructure projects.The infrastructure bill includes $125 million to fund pilot programs to test a national vehicle miles traveled fee.
- National pilot program: This includes $10 million each year from 2022 to 2026 for a national vehicles miles traveled fee pilot program.
- State and local pilot program: This includes $75 million provided from the federal government to regional, state and local transportation agencies. The breakdown is $15 million provided each year from 2022 to 2026.
Here is how the program would work….theoretically.
The language in the bill calls for the pilot to include people from all 50 states, D.C., and Puerto Rico. This includes drivers of both commercial and personal vehicles. All participants would volunteer for the pilot.Participants would keep paying the gas tax, but would also start paying a per-mile user fee. Those rates would be established by the Department of the Treasury, and once collected, the revenue would go to the Highway Trust Fund. The government would then refund the costs for these participants.”Not more than 60 days after the end of each calendar quarter in which a volunteer participant has participated in the pilot program,” the bill reads. “The Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of Transportation, shall estimate an amount of payment for each volunteer based on the vehicle miles submitted by the volunteer for the calendar quarter and issue such payment to such volunteer participant.”
Democrats are already explaining how this proposed mileage fee pilot program isn’t an issue (which means it is).
What is the chance that the gas tax will be rescinded after the mileage tax is implemented? I would say somewhere between slim and infinitesimal.
And how would you get “volunteers” to participate? I would imagine using the same persuasion techniques now used to force people to get the COVID vaccine.
Even though no complex fee number has been determined, many Americans are getting nervous about how much such a tax could cost annually. The impact on lower-wage earners who drive long distances to their place of employment would be significant.
Biden’s $400,000 tax hike ‘red line’ would be wholly paved over.
The $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure accord would institute a multiyear “national motor vehicle per-mile user fee pilot” program that, without future intervention from the White House, could potentially violate one of President Joe Biden’s previously stated red lines.Top White House officials emphatically stated for months that paying for the infrastructure investments by indexing gas taxes to inflation or instituting new electric vehicle mileage fees were hard red lines for the president on the grounds that they would raise taxes on people earning less than $400,000 per year.
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