Nelson Cole and the vehicle mileage tax

From staff reports
Published: November 3, 2008

In the Oct. 16 Eden Daily News, State Rep. Nelson Cole, a Democrat along with some state Transportation Department people, met and discussed with the Economic and Tourism Development group the hardships of the DOT in not having the proper funding to do the proposed projects in the coming years.

Cole stated “the highway fund was down $20 million in just two months” and continued on his plea about the economic hardships due to the high fuel cost and lack of tax revenue from the gas that we buy because people are driving less.

Putting this in terms that make common sense is simple, North Carolina has the highest gas tax in the surrounding four states. All of the fees for tags, transfers and inspections have gone up. More cars are registered today than they were a year ago. The people have cut some of their driving out but not to a huge extent. The problem is that the Raleigh is overspending and wasting the money.

Now Nelson Cole, a Democrat, wants to add another tax burden to the people of the state called a VMT, or Vehicle Mileage Tax. As Nelson stated in the article, Raleigh has everything in place to implement this tax immediately. The way it will work is when you go to get your car inspected the inspector will have to record your mileage as part of the inspection to get a printout. The mileage will then be stored as a vehicle record, and the next year when you have your car inspected again and the mileage is again recorded, the computer will calculate the mileage driven that year, and you will get a nice tax statement for mileage used. Do not worry. By changing vehicles before the inspection, Raleigh will estimate your mileage.

For example, the average family not commuting to work drives one car about 15,000 miles per year, and the VMT is two cents (.02) per mile. That family would have a tax of $300 for that one car. Just think that most families have two or three cars and both parents commute to work. The commuting families would drive about 30,000 miles each for a tax bill of $600 for each car.

The more horrifying thought is that when Raleigh passes this Vehicle Mileage Tax the county and city will want to get in on the action, and just think what your VMT will be if the state wants .02, the county wants .015 and the city wants .015 for a total of .05 per mile—now just do the math and cry.

For businesses, this cost will be passed on the consumer and again the people get hit with another increase in services and product. This would put North Carolina in a bad light as to getting new businesses to locate and cause a huge burden to our seniors, construction workers, families commuting to work, and business in the service field.

Nelson, stop the waste and this VMT idea.