Mileage Tax: The Next Step Towards Full-On 1984
President Joe Biden released his latest massive spending bill last week, a so-called “infrastructure” plan.
Although Pete Buttigieg, Biden’s transportation secretary, originally floated an idea of a mileage tax to fund the bill, he told CNN last week that neither a gas or mileage tax would be “part of the conversation about this infrastructure bill.”
However, as the federal government continues to spend, spend, spend, any type of taxation, including a tax-per-mile proposal, must be viewed by Americans as on the table in the near future.
Although Americans should be worried about protecting their pocketbooks, political cartoonist A.F. Branco hit on the real threat of a mileage tax this past weekend.
A mileage tax would lead to yet another encroachment on the privacy rights of Americans out of necessity for its implementation. Nearly every car built since 2010 has connected car technology that would necessarily need to be used for a tax-per-mile scheme from the government.
Eric Peters, known as the libertarian car guy, writes that “it’s much more than just another tax. It’s also a way to keep track of your movements…. Not just how far – but where and when.”
“The odometer reading would be read by communicating with the computer, which stores the data,” Peters writes. “Long-gone are the days of analog odometers that were purely mechanical things that had to be read in person, as when you took your car in for an oil change. And the data regarding miles driven isn’t kept in some isolated cubbyhole of the computer’s memory banks. It is stored along with the rest of the car’s data, which means whoever has access to some data has access to all of the data.”
Even if you’re one of those rarities today in America, someone who saves and purchases your car outright in order for you to have ownership of your vehicle, you signed away your rights to ownership over your data. You signed an End User License Agreement (EULA) for the conveniences you thought the computerized vehicles might bring you not knowing it could be used against you in the future by the government.
“You do not own the data; you are a user,” Peters wrote. “And they – the owners of your data – have license to take it, as they wish – which you agreed to…. It’s all set up; just needs a law to be passed.”
Peters also noted that the insurance industry will most certainly sign onto such a plan as it will allow it to hike your rates not based on your driving record but based on when and where you drive.
While the privacy destroying mileage tax may not be a part of the infrastructure bill, there’s still plenty for Americans who cherish liberty to oppose.
For starters, the price tag is over $2 trillion. How much over is unclear with varying numbers being reported, from $2 trillion reported by NPR to $2.3 trillion reported by AP. This as the national debt sits at $28.1 trillion, and rapidly growing, according to usdebtclock.org.
Next, the so-called “infrastructure” plan has only 6 percent of the spending going to infrastructure, according to Fox News. The plan includes such leftwing favorites as climate change spending, free community college and universal pre-kindergarten, and many other things that the government is not authorized to spend on under the U.S. Constitution.
And, while a gas tax or mileage tax may not be a part of it, Biden plans to hike other taxes, including a 33.3 percent increase in the corporate tax rate (21 percent to 28 percent). What should be noted is corporations do not pay taxes as the increases in costs are always passed on to consumers and employees.
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Content syndicated from TheLibertyLoft.com with permission.
