Now that gasoline prices are going up, it's a good time for governments to revisit ways to help consumers pay for the essentials, and there's no better place to start than taxes.
The Alliance for Automotive Innovation represents General Motors, Hyundai, Toyota and other manufacturers, and they've been watching the US Highway Trust Fund dwindle over the past few years -- now they're seeing big increases in gas prices and concluded it's time to do away with gasoline taxes and switch to a fee for each vehicle in the nation based on how much the vehicle weighs.
It's true that the US Highway Trust Fund, responsible in part for paying to get those potholes and bridges repaired, is likely to run out of money within the next two years.
But it's also true that such a proposed fee based on vehicle weight is unfair, as the "Car Pro Show" radio host Jerry Reynolds puts it.
"Because that puts somebody that drives a smaller car, that they drive a whole lot, at a disadvantage, whereas today someone who's driving a lot's paying that gas tax, that 18-cents a gallon gas tax," he says.
And perhaps most important, he says, "the people who are going to pay the price of a tax based on vehicle weight are the people who are using their vehicles for work, and they're struggling enough as it is."
With gasoline prices rising because of the Iran war, it seems an inopportune time to raise gasoline taxes, which range from 20-cents a gallon state tax in Texas (and much more in some other states) to the additional 18-cents federal tax mentioned above.
But the Alliance for Automotive Innovation plan for a fee should be subject to much more scrutiny, since it seems likely that the best plan to raise money for repairs of roads and highways would be to raise the existing highway tax, which is relatively reasonable considering the creeping costs of other taxes.
"The federal tax, at 18-cents, has been that way since the early '90s -- I've been shocked that that has not gone up," said Reynolds, who can be heard Saturday mornings on Newsradio 740 KTRH in Houston.