Tax review: Pay as you drive proposal

[balthazarr]

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2...13/2654463.htm
(my emphasis)

Pay-as-you-drive plan touted in tax review
By Meredith Griffiths for AM

The Federal Government is being urged to consider taxing drivers based on how far they drive.

It is just one proposal contained in a new paper commissioned as part of Ken Henry's review of the tax system.

The paper also recommends that truck drivers should be charged more to reflect the damage their heavier vehicles do to roads.

One of the report's authors, economics Professor Harry Clarke from LaTrobe University, says the main proposals are to levy congestion charges on vehicles in urban settings.

"[The aim is] generally to try to get to the point where we're charging people for the actual damage and costs of using roads - rather than fixed charges that are independent of the way they use roads," Professor Clarke said.

"The technology exists now; telemetric devices, or essentially boxes that are inserted in vehicles. These can provide information for commercial trucking fleet operation, or they can provide information to regulators."

The Government would be able to track where drivers went and how far they drove, but Professor Clarke denies this creates any privacy concern.

"That information would only accrue to the device and the user of the device would possess the information, but essentially the Government would be able to work out the charges that were associated with different types of use of roads, yes," he said.

Professor Clarke also says it would be a good thing if trucking companies passed on the costs of increased levies to consumers.

"If trucking companies are using low-durability roads and imposing lots of costs on the community in terms of maintenance costs, then it means that the price of goods that they are transporting should be higher than they are," he said.

"They're not reflecting their full social costs. So the market wouldn't fail at all in that situation; that would be the sort of outcome that you'd hope with these charges.

"The idea of charging on the basis of weight is to encourage heavy-vehicle users of roads to use the roads sensibly; to use the most durable roads, or to make good economic decisions when they come to use roads that are of less than optimal kind of durability."

Riiiight... the government having access to a complete historic log of when/where a vehicle has been... what privacy concerns?

So let's get this straight - trucks cause more damage to roads, so should pay more tax to help pay for maintaining/repairing the roads. This means that they'll pass on costs to consumers (taxpayers), so we end up paying more.

So, under this proposal, taxpayers will end up paying twice - once to fix and maintain the roads (a cost we already pay for) and then again when higher taxes force higher prices for goods.

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How do these numpties get media play?