SDR News

GPS Tracking for Gasoline Tax

The Kansas City Star reports that there are trials underway at the University of Iowa involving GPS tracking for tax enforcement. With a target date of 2020, they will need those 11 years of lead time to handle the first round of lawsuits. 

The notion is that as fuel efficiency increases, revenues from the gasoline tax go down. The tech solution is to place GPS trackers on every vehicle and then read them remotely and send a bill each month based on the exact miles driven. This would, supposedly replace the 18 cents per gallon gas tax with a mileage tax of 1 or 2 cents per mile driven.

There seem to be an increasing number of things that get investigated without thinking - and this is a prime candidate. Just because you can doesn't mean that you should. 

Or maybe you'd be willing to sell your right to privacy of movement for half a penny a mile ? If your auto gets a bit better than 20 mpg and the gas tax is roughly 18 cents, you'd "save" 16 cents and be able to drive around 32  miles on the difference.

This sounds like a non-starter. And the EFF and ACLU have not even begun to sharpen up their knives. As well they should.