My own little gas tax thread

poopshovel wrote:

OP said: The funny thing is, I contacted the state asking how to pay my road tax.

You contacted "the state?" Who exactly did you contact? The fact(?) that whoever you spoke to was too lazy or stupid to take your money should be evidence enough that the people you're desperately trying to throw more of your money at are too lazy and stupid to even TAKE it, much less spend it efficiently or effectively.

Technically "the state" were a few different departments. From what other "greasers" have said, I fully expected the response I got. I am sure there is a way to handle this, but if they can't/won't tell me (and I have it documented) I should be in the clear.

DrBoost wrote: Ok, I was going to post this about the time the other gas tax thread started the decent into the crapper. This is not a political thread so please leave that other thread dead. I don't pay road tax, not really. I have a diesel I run on veggie oil, it's legal here. The funny thing is, I contacted the state asking how to pay my road tax. I explained what I'm doing and said I can track my miles and send them a check monthly, quarterly or what ever. I assume they thought I was speaking Klingon because they had no idea what I was talking about. They said there is no way for me to send in my moolah. So, since my diesel expenditure is about $200 a year I'm paying enough road tax to sweep 1/4 mile of the shoulder of a secondary road I guess. Anyway, my situation isn't that different from others. A prius owner isn't paying his "fair share" of road tax since his travel is augmented by an electric motor, even more so with a BEV. Heck, even conventional IC-driven cars are getting more and more efficient, thus paying less taxes. So, what's a state to do? I think there are two possibilities. 1. yearly inspections were your mileage is recorded, and billed. 2. little black boxes that track your miles, you are billed. The second option would allow the gub'ment to send you a ticket anytime the black box recorded a speed greater than what's posted. What do you folks think?

RIFD + toll roads. You only pay for the roads you drive on.

DrBoost, did you also try to contact the Federal Government to give them their share of the tax revenue you feel they are denied? (I'm assuming your car uses more than a mile or two of interstate hiway a year?) How about the local municipality? Where my folks live, county and township roads are rapidly falling apart "thanks" to the increased truck traffic generated by the drilling of oil and gas from shale deposits. You can always tell when you have gone from one county's roads to another by the condition of the pavement/number of unfilled potholes.

I guess I'm one of that tiny minority of folks who believes government, at ALL levels, gets MORE money via taxes for everything from the taxpayers than it really delivers.

In my example of (possible?) government waste, the local, government-owned utility recently replaced all the concrete utility poles on a 3 mile stretch of road near me. Aside from a slightly darker shade of grey to the concrete, the new poles and old poles appear indistinguishable. I thought the whole point of concrete utility poles was that they last nearly forever?

No, to be honest I didn't. I tried the state and after hitting dead-ends I didn't even try any further. S'pose I should, but I didn't. I'm not trying to play holier than thou, or anyone for that matter. I did it because a few other folks in other states tried and nobody has found a way. Suppose I tried it so I could feel like I tried to be good. I'm not sure if anyone had any luck (or even tried) with the feds though. And yeah, they get enough taxes to handle things if they wanted to.