How long before the proposed tax becomes a surveillence tool??
Connect the dots............
Drivers will help test idea for a tax on vehicle mileage
Austin-area volunteers to join study of alternative to gas tax.
Click-2-Listen
By Ben Wear
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Saturday, September 22, 2007
Austin will be one of the test sites for a federally funded study on replacing the gas tax with a charge on the mileage people drive.
The cars of about 450 Austin-area volunteers, roughly half in 2008 and the other half in 2009, will be outfitted with a Global Positioning System receiver and a small on-board computer. The system will collect information about miles driven, keeping track of the states in which the driving occurred. Then, the system will periodically dump that information into a billing system.
Policymakers across the United States see a mileage tax as a potential successor to the gas tax. The federal government has an 18.4 cents per gallon tax, and states have their own levies. The state gas tax in Texas is 20 cents per gallon.
The computer will not retain information on precisely where drivers went, just how far and in what jurisdiction.
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