Illinois trying to pass a mileage tax.

1600vw

1600vw

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They are saying not enough taxes are going to roads because of electric cars and people getting better gas mileage out of their cars.

I myself believe this is a lot of crap. If they want to charge a tax on electric cars that is fine. But to charge this charge for those who buy gas is wrong. Gas is already taxed for road use. Now we who buy gas are getting double taxed or paying twice. Just not right.

Tony
 
How many electric or hybrid cars can there be in Illinois? I think they make up less than 1% of the total USA automobile fleet, and Illinois isn't California.
 
Pull the fuse for your odometer, and have a GPS speedometer visible.

"You only drove 17 miles in the last year?"
"That's what the odometer says."
 
EdFred said:
Pull the fuse for your odometer, and have a GPS speedometer visible.

"You only drove 17 miles in the last year?"
"That's what the odometer says."
Click to expand...

If they are serious they will do it like Europe with cameras everywhere.

That's how London implemented the Central London vehicle charge.
Even the photo-radar is getting more sophisticated. In Switzerland and Germany the multilane gantries with the photo radar cameras on the motorways are pretty obvious - you can be driving at the speed limit when you pass them. But if the computers calculate that you were speeding in between two points they mail the registered owner a ticket.

Big Brother meets tax collector...
 
GRG55 said:
If they are serious they will do it like Europe with cameras everywhere.

That's how London implemented the Central London vehicle charge.
Even the photo-radar is getting more sophisticated. In Switzerland and Germany the multilane gantries with the photo radar cameras on the motorways are pretty obvious - you can be driving at the speed limit when you pass them. But if the computers calculate that you were speeding in between two points they mail the registered owner a ticket.

Big Brother meets tax collector...
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"Muddy" license plates for the win. :D

Illinois has such a **** ton of toll roads, all they have to do is jack the tolls on those.
 
1600vw said:
They are saying not enough taxes are going to roads because of electric cars and people getting better gas mileage out of their cars.

I myself believe this is a lot of crap. If they want to charge a tax on electric cars that is fine. But to charge this charge for those who buy gas is wrong. Gas is already taxed for road use. Now we who buy gas are getting double taxed or paying twice. Just not right.

Tony
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Legislators are elected in Illinois, aren't they? As long as that's true, then it's the people who are to blame for idiotic legislation.

(Not that New York is any better, mind you. We're probably worse.)

Rich
 
Yes, in Illinois, they are "elected" - by dead people.
 
Money's gotta come from somewhere.

Well, sort of.

You could follow the Michigan model of funding infrastructure and schools at third world levels.

10250229_199662083537686_6825268944710953247_n.jpg
 
Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe said:
Money's gotta come from somewhere.

Well, sort of.

You could follow the Michigan model of funding infrastructure and schools at third world levels.
Click to expand...

True, but you can't double-tax those who drive ICE-powered vehicles. If they want to institute a mileage tax, I don't see why anyone should be against that. However, they would need to remove the road-funding portion of the fuel taxes simultaneously in order to be equitable.
 
It's their way of justifying a tax raise. Do yourself a favor and get out now. You'll be amazed at how less stressful it is to live somewhere where they appreciate YOU, not your money.
 
But but if they placed an "electric car state and city tax" on that group it would be punishing and deterring folks from buying "green" cars.

Put a registration tax on the EV crowd is the only sensible thing to do if they continue to claim the loss in revenue is from them. Better gas mileage on straight fuel burners need only a <5% increase or so on fuel tax. Since most new vehicles only get about that much better mileage than 1995 through 2010 vehicles.
 
bnt83 said:
But but if they placed an "electric car state and city tax" on that group it would be punishing and deterring folks from buying "green" cars.

Put a registration tax on the EV crowd is the only sensible thing to do if they continue to claim the loss in revenue is from them. Better gas mileage on straight fuel burners need only a <5% increase or so on fuel tax. Since most new vehicles only get about that much better mileage than 1995 through 2010 vehicles.
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Georgia added a road use fee, I am not sure of the wording for electric vehicles, $200 per year extra for the tag. It is a reasonable way to make up the lost fuel tax revenue, but it only applies to electric and hybrid vehicles. Mileage tax is basically doubling the fuel tax, but politicians aren't shy about doing these types of things, are they? :rolleyes:
 
It will happen at some point. Our roads are falling apart from lack of funding and idiotic repair strategies. The US highway bridge next to my house has half foot holes in the decking. I can see the river as I drive over them. Some states are letting roads revert back to gravel/dirt because they don't have the funds to maintain them.

Also, who ever thought hot/cold patching was a long term fix needs to be hit with a shovel. The hole will just become bigger the next year. Dig up that section of road and replace it.
 
What needs to happen with road construction is proper drainage. They don't do the proper prep work, and the roads go to ****.
 
I'd rather have gas taxes than toll roads. I hate those tolls. Creeps keep doing it more and more around here.
 
EdFred said:
Yes, in Illinois, they are "elected" - by dead people.
Click to expand...

And those people vote early and often, IL is such a corrupt state besides the mileage tax they also want to chage the income tax, so that those that make less pay less, those that make more pay more to make up for the reduced rate for lower incomes.

Road in bad shape lets see how many contractors got caught for cheating on the road construction by paying off state employees, 4 inches instead of 8 of concrete type things, and the tollways were supposed to be paid off 40 years ago, more corruption at the IL Tollway
 
EdFred said:
Pull the fuse for your odometer, and have a GPS speedometer visible.

"You only drove 17 miles in the last year?"
"That's what the odometer says."
Click to expand...

I've never seen a fused odometer, except perhaps if it also includes a whole instrument cluster. Bad idea, and it's fraud on several levels to falsify an odometer. Not just for government; you're also ripping off auto repair shops and insurance. Not to mention, any "savings" in taxes will get swallowed up several times over when you overheat and don't know it because the temperature gauge is disabled. Some cars (BMW) will not even start if the instrument cluster doesn't answer the PCM.

For cheap cars, the odometer is mechanical and tamper resistant. There is no electricity involved.
 
MAKG1 said:
I've never seen a fused odometer, except perhaps if it also includes a whole instrument cluster. Bad idea, and it's fraud on several levels to falsify an odometer. Not just for government; you're also ripping off auto repair shops and insurance. Not to mention, any "savings" in taxes will get swallowed up several times over when you overheat and don't know it because the temperature gauge is disabled. Some cars (BMW) will not even start if the instrument cluster doesn't answer the PCM.

For cheap cars, the odometer is mechanical and tamper resistant. There is no electricity involved.
Click to expand...

Blah blah blah, I'm scared of the boogie man. Don't buy POS's and you don't have to worry about overheating. We've put on literally millions of miles in the past 20 years and never had one of our vehicles overheat. Even the one that has almost 500k on it right no. Wheel bearings, transmissions, sure. But never had one overheat. And none of my near 20 personal vehicles has ever overheated.
 
Try my (soon to be former) State!

"Maryland! If You Can Dream it, We can Tax It!"

"Maryland! NJ, W/O NY"

We rank first in gerrymandering (keeps the democratic party in power), and flinging benefits and dollars at "schools" (read "teacher's unions"), and generally are shameless in using tax dollars from the productive to buy votes from the slackers. We deal with multiple quasi-independent entities (county gov't, school system, multiple jurisdiction "planning commission", water/sewer utility, etc., each who must have their own purchasing, H/R, budgeting, accounting, etc., groups. Maryland cratered the health exchange they tried to set-up, took 50+ (fifty) years to build a 20 mile toll road, and has a parasitic legislative body with more members than a small town (all paid a salary, of course).

And as far as "not getting it", the morons also advise taxpayers to "write your social security number" on your check" when paying taxes.
 
I wouldn't pay it and I wouldn't screw with my car over it.

Simply put you're enabling, it's like a friend who keeps asking you for money, even though he makes enough, his poor spending habits leave him behind on rent, it's not a matter of him having "enough" it's a issue with his mentality, which makes it so no matter how much money he has he will always be short on rent.

Same deal with government, just say no.
 
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RJM62 said:
Legislators are elected in Illinois, aren't they? As long as that's true, then it's the people who are to blame for idiotic legislation.

(Not that New York is any better, mind you. We're probably worse.)

Rich
Click to expand...
I blame all the dead voters who keep voting for these clowns.
 
coloradobluesky said:
I'd rather have gas taxes than toll roads. I hate those tolls. Creeps keep doing it more and more around here.
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I disagree. At least with the toll road the money is more easily tracked and most all expenses go towards repairing roads or maintaining their workforce/infrastructure. With fuel surcharges, it gets lost much more in the government coffers when combined with other funding. It's one of the things I can't stand: taxing a product/service which benefits something wholly unrelated. Sort of like taxing cigarettes to pay for education as they are trying to do in OK.
 
I believe Oregon has been looking at taxing by the mile, as well. The argument is that more fuel efficient cars burn less gas, so gas tax revenues are reduced. That's the argument, anyway. Here in Washington state we have an initiative writer who has, successfully, driven initiatives to reduce the cost of licencing your car and I would suspect that if the idiots in Olympia passed a mileage tax he would promptly draft an initiative that would get enough signatures to be placed on the ballot to kill it. It likely would pass in November, as well. Kind of like what has happened over the decades when someone proposes a state income tax. It has gone to the voters a number of times over the past decades and the universal result has been that the voters have told the legislature, in clear terms, to forget about it. Which they do, for a while. Then they try again. Politicians never learn.
 
I live in a part of IL that gets so ignored by the Chicago elite that we have a name for it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forgottonia

So I'm instantly suspicious of anything IL does that raises tax or adds new laws. They're always targeted to the Chicago area, we pay the tax they get most of the benefit.

I don't think it will pass though. The state is having huge debt and budget problems right now and our state legislature is so disorganized they couldn't even agree to maintain the "temporary" income tax hike so effectively what we've done is dramatically lower our state tax in the middle of a budget crisis. Heck most votes in the IL legislature are all the cook/lake co(Chicago) legislators vs the rest of the state which is unfortunately pretty much a deadlock.

I like a milage tax in principal but I don't feel like there's a way to track milage that isn't either overly intrusive, grossly unfair to certain people, or too easy(and tempting) to cheat. For now I think it makes more sense just to raise the gas tax again and keep the incentive to drive electric cars. With gas at $2/gal and likely to go back up to $3 again, what's another 5-10 cents anyway? I wouldn't even notice it.
 
EdFred said:
Blah blah blah, I'm scared of the boogie man. Don't buy POS's and you don't have to worry about overheating. We've put on literally millions of miles in the past 20 years and never had one of our vehicles overheat. Even the one that has almost 500k on it right no. Wheel bearings, transmissions, sure. But never had one overheat. And none of my near 20 personal vehicles has ever overheated.
Click to expand...

You've been lucky. There are quite a lot of expensive vehicles prone to overheat. Like BMW E45s. All you need for that to happen is one idiot oil changer who "tops off" your coolant and doesn't know how to bleed it or keep from overfilling.

Virtually every vehicle will leak coolant when the water pump wears out. No, they do not usually leave puddles, so avoid that excuse please. There are several early warnings you might get, but all the obvious ones are on the instrument cluster you want to disable.

Besides, you CAN'T disable an odometer like you suggested. Very few of them are electric, and the cheap ones you rail about have purely mechanical odometers for which there is no fuse to pull.
 
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GRG55 said:
If they are serious they will do it like Europe with cameras everywhere.

That's how London implemented the Central London vehicle charge.
Even the photo-radar is getting more sophisticated. In Switzerland and Germany the multilane gantries with the photo radar cameras on the motorways are pretty obvious - you can be driving at the speed limit when you pass them. But if the computers calculate that you were speeding in between two points they mail the registered owner a ticket.

Big Brother meets tax collector...
Click to expand...

Already doing that with EZ-Pass in some states.
 
The mafia run toll companies can take their toll sytems and shove 'em. Raise gas taxes. Someone buys more gas, they drive more, they pay more tax. Reason they don't. Politicians OWNED by the oil companies. How much was gas the last time we had a raise in gas tax.
 
coloradobluesky said:
The mafia run toll companies can take their toll sytems and shove 'em. Raise gas taxes. Someone buys more gas, they drive more, they pay more tax. Reason they don't. Politicians OWNED by the oil companies. How much was gas the last time we had a raise in gas tax.
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Lol that doesn't solve the problem. Electric vehicles wouldn't be paying for the roads the use and are helping cause deterioration.
 
NHWannabe said:
Already doing that with EZ-Pass in some states.
Click to expand...

As far as I can tell, they're not issuing tickets. If you speed through the EZ-Pass toll booth (or monitoring gantry), they can suspend your EZ-pass, but I can't find any evidence that they can do anything more (based on State law). I recall something about NJ trying to do that on the GSP, but I don't believe they're ticketing folks.

Heck, if you make a payment to EZ-Pass, it takes up to 48 hours for the amount to credit across all systems. If they can't do that instantaneously, how can anyone expect them to do ticketing?

Ghery said:
I believe Oregon has been looking at taxing by the mile, as well. The argument is that more fuel efficient cars burn less gas, so gas tax revenues are reduced. That's the argument, anyway.
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Wasn't Oregon the state that wanted to mandate the installation of GPS units on every ve-hickle in order to use the data to impose highway use taxes? Or am I mistaken?

Of course, if the insurance companies get their way, such data (along with OBD-II) will be tracked, monitored, and sent to them.
 
I get all sorts of tickets for the owners of my house two owners ago. They managed to figure out how to keep renewing their license plates at our address for, not kidding... ten years. Only a letter to the State/Local Plate Office/Local Sheriff got a note finally put on their plates "Make these people show proof of address"...

They'd figured out how to game the system and were tooling around in a 5th wheel, which I have a number of lovely photos of the back of it getting toll road and speeding tickets.

Yeah... automated ticketing... screw that... they couldn't even figure out how to find this couple for TEN YEARS to stop sending me their tickets.
 
Here's why there's no real interest in raising the gas tax... the public is obsessed with it.

I can't be the only person who notices it... people always commenting on which gas stations are $.02 cheaper, "OMG gas went up $.10 across town fill your tanks now!", "enjoy it while it lasts", etc, etc. You could double the state's income tax and less people would take notice and cause a stir than a $.05 gas tax hike.

I mean if you actually do the math it's just not that much money but people lose their minds over it. I can see why it would be a big deal to someone who is in the transportation business or just drives for a living but for most of us it shouldn't hold the significance that it seems to.
 
Problem is; not all of the gas tax goes to roads. Some states usurp part of it for other pet projects while the roads suffer. Oh, and in my neck-o-the-woods the road commission is building roundabouts and paving a dirt road from nowhere to nowhere while the potholes never get filled.
 
wsuffa said:
As far as I can tell, they're not issuing tickets. If you speed through the EZ-Pass toll booth (or monitoring gantry), they can suspend your EZ-pass, but I can't find any evidence that they can do anything more (based on State law). I recall something about NJ trying to do that on the GSP, but I don't believe they're ticketing folks.

Heck, if you make a payment to EZ-Pass, it takes up to 48 hours for the amount to credit across all systems. If they can't do that instantaneously, how can anyone expect them to do ticketing?
Click to expand...

I've gotten a few warnings for going too fast through E-ZPass tolls (many in New York have 5 mph limits), I got one for not updating one of my vehicles on their records, and I got one telling me that there was a problem with my transponder and it needed to be replaced; but I never received any actual tickets or fines. I've only gotten warnings.

I do know people who swear that they were fined, but I have my doubts.

Rich
 
Norman said:
Problem is; not all of the gas tax goes to roads. Some states usurp part of it for other pet projects while the roads suffer. Oh, and in my neck-o-the-woods the road commission is building roundabouts and paving a dirt road from nowhere to nowhere while the potholes never get filled.
Click to expand...

Around here it's mass transit. The MTA is a black hole into which money disappears.

Rich
 
My favorite "stick it to the man" episode happened (and will happen again) on a toll road that uses cameras to get license plate photos. You get the toll in the mail about 30 days later. My State only requires a tag on the rear, and it was obscured by the bike rack and bike I was carrying. Woohoo!
 
The federal gas tax has not been raised since the ninetys! it's a perfect time to raise it as interest rates are very low, plus gas prices are low. The congress is too ideological to allow this common sense move to happen which is really stupid. The longer they wait, the more expensive the road- bridge repair will cost. But it's important to remember what Mitch mcconnell said almost eight years ago....." No matter what obama brings up we will say no"
 
1600vw said:
They are saying not enough taxes are going to roads because of electric cars and people getting better gas mileage out of their cars.

I myself believe this is a lot of crap. If they want to charge a tax on electric cars that is fine. But to charge this charge for those who buy gas is wrong. Gas is already taxed for road use. Now we who buy gas are getting double taxed or paying twice. Just not right.

Tony
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The proposal included a refund of the state gas taxes, though you would have to file for it and provide receipts. http://wqad.com/2016/04/16/new-proposal-would-tax-illinois-drivers-per-mile/

The proposal has been withdrawn.
http://abc7chicago.com/news/lawmaker-drops-idea-to-tax-illinois-drivers-by-the-mile-/1298012/
 
The truth of the matter is that they probably ARE collecting enough money from the road / gas taxes as it is to fix them, but like here in Texas, they refuse to use it for what it was originally collected for and spend it elsewhere, then whine that they don't have enough money. Politicians who divert funds from their intended use - they should be permanently barred from office, their wealth should be confiscated to remedy the problem, and their future wages garnished to repay the taxpayers.
 
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