Get ready for Big Brother to ride with you wherever you go in your car. According to the Waco Tribune Herald, the Texas Transportation Commission is tasking the Highway User Fee Exploratory Commette to examine the possibility of taxing us Texans not by how much gas we use, but by how many miles we drive.
They are calling this tax a vehicle-miles-traveled tax, or VMT tax. Chris Evilia, director of the Waco Metropolitan Planning Organization, claims that since drivers are switching to more fuel-efficient vehicles the VMT is “all the more important.”
How will they collect the VMT tax? Well, according to Chris Lippincott, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Transportation, they will have to collect it either by an odometer check during our annual vehicle inspections or via a GPS tracking system in all of our cars. You read that right: a GPS tracking system in our cars.
This is disgraceful! For years the environmental wackos in government have told us we need to cut down on vehicle emissions to save the planet. Now they complain that they’re losing revenue because of this and that they will not only have to raise gas taxes, but will have to create a completely new tax to make up for lost revenue! Make no mistake, the VMT tax is not about making up for lost revenue, but about seizing more control over our lives.
This idea may seem crazy now, but like all other statist tax and control ideas, it will not go away. According to Mr. Evilia it could take, “at least a decade and some say maybe even a generation” for this tax to take effect.
Clearly there is only one solution if we don’t want our gas taxes to go up and if we want to avoid a VMT tax: drive more and don’t buy a hybrid.
