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Pat Garofalo writes in an op-ed in US News & World Report that with the recent drop in oil prices, there's something policymakers can do that will offset at least some of the negative effects of the currently low prices, while also removing a constant thorn in the side of American transportation and infrastructure policy: Raise the gas tax. The current 18.4 cent per gallon [federal] gas tax has not been raised since 1993, making it about 11 cents per gallon today, in constant dollars. Plus, as fuel efficiency has gotten better and Americans have started driving less, the tax has naturally raised less revenue anyway. And that's a problem because the tax fills the Highway Trust Fund, which is, not to put too fine a point on it, broke so that in recent years Congress has had to patch it time and time again to fill the gap. According to the Tax Policy Center's Howard Gleckman, if Congress doesn't make a move, "it will fumble one of those rare opportunities when the economic and policy stars align almost perfectly." The increase can be phased in slowly, a few cents per month, perhaps, so that the price of gas doesn't jump overnight. When prices eventually do creep back up thanks to economic factors, hopefully the tax will hardly be noticed.
Consumers are already starting to buy the sort of gas-guzzling vehicles, including Hummers, that had been going out of style as gas prices rose; that's bad for both the environment and consumers, because gas prices are inevitably going to increase again. According to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, taxes last year, even before the current drop in prices, made up 12 percent of the cost of a gallon of gasoline, down from 28 percent in 2000. And compared to other developed countries, US gas taxes are pretty much a joke. While we're at it, an even better idea, as a recent report from the Urban Institute makes clear, would be indexing the gas tax to inflation (pdf), so this problem doesn't consistently arise. "The status quo simply isn't sustainable, from an infrastructure or environmental perspective," concludes Garofalo. "So raise the gas tax now; someday down the line, it will look like a brilliant move."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 13 2014, @11:46PM
>> There is almost 90 million more cars on the roads paying that puny tax since the early ninety's.
> Which are doing 90 million more cars' worth of wear-and-tear on the roads.
And paying for it in the tax that is already there. Those cars are not paying 0...
That the tax has not kept up with inflation is a failure of 20 years of congress and the senate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 14 2014, @12:13AM
> And paying for it in the tax that is already there.
The tax has not kept up with inflation nor has it kept up with increase in engine efficiencies.
Apparently you are also not someone of clue, what has soylent come to?
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 14 2014, @02:36AM
Apparently better than you... If you had kept reading...
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Friday November 14 2014, @02:42AM
Well which is, more cars, more guzzlers, or more efficiency? The FS and comments are all over the place. And lets not forget that states charge tax for roads too -- in my state that's 37.5 cents, which combined with the Fed tax is 56 cents/gallon. Then of course cities can add to that as well. That's about 1/7 the price per gallon, which seems like a pretty high tax to me (*).
Then of course there is all the tax money that goes to fight wars about oil ...
Tell you what, I'll happily pay a higher gas tax if the military budget gets slashed in half. Till then, fuck the tax increase.
(*) Gas in my area is usually close to 50 cents more per gal than elsewhere (I live near the Canadian border and the cross border gas business is great ... if you are a Canadian ... because of the extra high tax in Canada), but that figure gets worse for people who live farther south because the gas tax is a flat rate per gallon, not a percentage.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 14 2014, @02:53AM
> Well which is, more cars, more guzzlers, or more efficiency?
Sorry, I can not parse your question, so I am going to say what should be obvious.
More cars, less guzzlers and more efficiency. Gas used per vehicle mile travelled has significantly decreased and at the same time the tax has had an effective decrease of 40%.
> states charge tax for roads too -- in my state that's 37.5 cents,
This is about the federal excise tax and federal highway funds. What states do or don't do is irrelevant. Their tax revenues are not available to the federal highway fund.
> Tell you what, I'll happily pay a higher gas tax if the military budget gets slashed in half. Till then, fuck the tax increase.
Hell, lets pick any random thing we don't like the government doing and make that a precondition of maintaining our economic infrastructure. That's facts! That's logic!
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Friday November 14 2014, @09:11AM
This exactly. I don't care what the rest of the country is paying — the same day that articles about sub-$3/gal gas came out, I had to pay $3.459/gal. I've ended up doing all of my grocery shopping at Safeway in large part because they have a rewards program where even modest spending can get a 20¢/gallon Chevron discount. I don't know about the rest of the country, but most people out here drive a small- to mid-size sedan, and I almost never see an SUV or similar vehicles.
I definitely question the articles claiming that people that normally wouldn't buy an SUV are suddenly rushing out to get one because of a temporary reduction in gas prices. Too much of the country is still scraping by for that to be realistic for anyone outside the affluent "McMansion" crowd, and they're not the sort to base their vehicle purchases on temporary decreases in gas prices.
(Score: 1, Troll) by ilPapa on Friday November 14 2014, @12:42AM
What would make you think that a tax needs to "keep up with inflation"? You understand that the gas tax is a percentage, right?
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 14 2014, @01:02AM
> You understand that the gas tax is a percentage, right?
It has been 18.4 cents per gallon for over 20 years.
You should be ashamed for not spending the 30 seconds to google that before posting.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 14 2014, @01:04AM
Hell, he should be ashamed for not RTFS!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 14 2014, @01:19AM
>That the tax has not kept up with inflation is a failure of 20 years of congress and the senate.
If only there were some way to correct the problem...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Friday November 14 2014, @03:17AM
Correctly solved, the solution is not trivial.
You see, putting tax on gas to pay for the roads wear-and-tear (or new roads) is pure stupidity. Not only it doesn't account for evolutions in engine efficiency, but the governing law for road wear-and-tear is in a disproportionate relation with the amount of fuel used by a vehicle.
Details: the road wear-and-tear follows the "generalized 4-th power law" [pavementinteractive.org] (an empirically but rigorous determined law): simply put, the amount of damage cause by a load on a (rigid enough) pavement scales with the 4-th power of the "load per axle".
Now, assume the very same vehicle travelling with the same speed on the same road for the same distance but with two different loads:
If you really want to fairly collect money to repair the roads, you'd better start taxing the "load per axle" instead of fuel consumed.
Thus, it becomes logical to tax a Hummer higher than a Honda Civic... unless the Hummer comes with 4 axles or (rubber protected) caterpillar tracks.
Ummm... good luck with that
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 14 2014, @03:22AM
Yet another case of pure stupidity at work - a solution that isn't perfect must be avoided, never mind a history of decades of it being good enough.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by c0lo on Friday November 14 2014, @04:03AM
May I remind you that the "history of decades" said until about 6 years ago that "house prices never go down"? Wasn't that a stupidity at work?
(my point: reliance on traditions/habits/trends as a substitute for thinking is a matter of luck. Now... question: how long you reckon until your luck runs dry?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 14 2014, @04:43AM
Oh jesus christ. How the hell do you go from the very basic algebra of road usage and maintenance costs to untested pricing of derivative risk?
It's like numbers is numbers, george! They are all the same, george.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday November 14 2014, @05:19AM
I didn't. Just refused an "argumentum ad antiquitatem" fallacy which, in my understanding, was: "an approximate solution that used to work fine in the past can be repaired by tweaking it" (citing it again: "never mind a history of decades of it being good enough."). It may be so, but again it may be not - take the tradition which led to GFC as a counterexample
What I'm sure is that road wear and fuel don't go hand in hand neither at any moment (depends on the load per axle) nor along "history" (better engines of the present consume less per tonne than 15years ago. More powerful engines results in higher load capacity thus higher road wear than 15 years ago). So it may well be that taxing the fuel may have already become unfair/inappropriate/harmful for covering the road maintenance today even if it was a good enough approximation 10 years ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford