ATRI puts $20B price tag on vehicle-miles-traveled tax

From FreightWaves.

New research released Wednesday from the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) found that replacing the federal fuel tax with a vehicle-miles-traveled (VMT) tax could result in collection costs of more than $20 billion annually.

The main reason for that price tag – which is 300 times higher than the current cost to collect fuel taxes – is a “shift in collection points” from a limited number of fuel terminal operators to 272 million registered motor vehicles in the U.S.

The report comes as Congress begins to negotiate the next infrastructure bill and figure out how to keep the federal highway trust fund (HTF), which pays for the country’s roads and bridges, from going bankrupt. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the HTF will be exhausted by 2022.

“With policymakers preparing to lay out a vision for the future of America’s infrastructure, ATRI’s analysis could not come at a more critical time,” said American Trucking Associations (ATA) President and CEO Chris Spear. “Most experts agree that some sort of VMT system is a part of that future, and ATRI’s report makes clear that implementing it will take thoughtful leadership, cooperation from stakeholders and a strong plan to transition away from current funding streams.”

While a VMT tax system would likely be applied to all vehicles, ATRI noted that it conducted its research in response to a proposal last year supported by several U.S. senators for VMT applied exclusively to trucks. It called for electronic logging devices to track truckers’ movements and report them back to the Internal Revenue Service. The proposal is strongly opposed by ATA but is getting a fresh look from the Senate Finance Committee, according to Politico.

See the complete article online at the FreightWaves website.