Tax stuff
Our tax code is corrupt. Yes, it is.
Longer yellow light times slash revenue.
States considering taxing mileage traveled to make up for lost gas tax revenue from plug in vehicles. More here.
15 Responses to “Tax stuff”
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March 28th, 2011 at 9:34 am
They’ve been floating that “hey lets track your car with GPS” thing for about 10 years in the northwest. It never gets far, but it sure is scary.
The first time I heard about this, my first thought was “well that will take about 3 days to hack.”
March 28th, 2011 at 10:25 am
I think putting the GPS for my vehicle on the next ship leaving port in Galveston would make for an interesting tax challenge. Sure, the GPS says I crossed the Atlantic, but my Texas Tollways tag registered my movements, with pictures, all around Houston.
Who you gonna believe, the GPS or the pictures?
March 28th, 2011 at 10:46 am
We all have cell phones on us every day. Those track you constantly. And they can (and have) even be turned on remotely (with a warrant, you’d hope) by the FBI to spy on you.
Sure a GPS tracker in your car is scary, but we’re really already there.
March 28th, 2011 at 11:30 am
We may be “already there”, but that’s no excuse not to fight back. We have got to start resisting @ some point. How about now??? Don’t have the answers, but willing to do what I can.
March 28th, 2011 at 11:44 am
This raises an interesting question: Roads, previously paid for with a fuel tax as a sort of user fee, will need to be paid for somehow. How will this be done? Asking everyone to fund them, regardless of if they own a vehicle or not, through some other tax? GPS road use fees? Just how will roads be paid for?
March 28th, 2011 at 11:57 am
I already pay a $50.00yr local wheel tax, plus state license fees, plus gasoline tax, sales tax, property tax, ad nauseum. We only rent our property, vehicles, etc. from the county, state, & feds.
March 28th, 2011 at 11:59 am
How about we quit letting the politicians appropriate fuel tax money to other projects/wallets… That would be a damn good way to start…
March 28th, 2011 at 12:58 pm
We all benefit from the roads. My amazon.com purchases get to me via the roads, the food gets to my supermarket shelves via the roads, and the fire department (even if it was a private one) would come to my house to extinguish fires via the roads. I don’t see paying for roads out of regular taxes as such a big deal. They’re a huge part of society and they’re public.
March 28th, 2011 at 2:08 pm
Jay: the problem is all those services you mention pay road taxes through their fuel cost. They then build that into the cost of the service. So by buying the service, you are already paying the road use taxes.
March 28th, 2011 at 3:59 pm
I have practiced tax law for almost 3 decades and I would like to see our country adopt a national sales tax in place of the individual and corporate income taxes and the Federal estate tax.
And GE’s relationship with the Federal government is as seemingly incestuous as Goldman Sach’s relationship with the Treasury and the Fed.
March 28th, 2011 at 4:08 pm
wizardpc: That’s my point. They should be paid out of regular taxes, not a “use tax”, which is essentially what a gas tax is.
March 28th, 2011 at 9:10 pm
Don’t believe the hype about cell phone tracking; at least unless you have reason to believe the trackers got physical access to your phone. (Then, all bets are off). The FBI has a vested interest in appearing argus-like.
Also, why GPS? Each car has a much more tamper-proof measure of miles traveled in the odometer.
March 29th, 2011 at 1:48 am
Ian Argent:
At least in Germany, the cell phone tracking hype is reality:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/26/business/media/26privacy.html
March 29th, 2011 at 2:07 am
“We all have cell phones on us every day. Those track you constantly. And they can (and have) even be turned on remotely (with a warrant, you’d hope) by the FBI to spy on you.
Sure a GPS tracker in your car is scary, but we’re really already there.”
Depending on your phone type, this can be pretty easy to get around.
March 29th, 2011 at 7:30 am
@Jay: OK – technically by their very nature, the cell phone company has relatively specific knowledge of where your device is. The CEP is pretty large, though.
In the US it takes a subpoena that the cell phone companies are not particularly willing to co-operate with.
Unfortunately, this is where I have to drop the conversation due to some NDAs I am subject to. I will point out that you should be aware of the source of that article – a group with a vested interest in outraging people.