Originally Posted by
Roughstuff
Right. But the taxes in this case are misplaced. Sales taxes and income taxes have nothing to do with transit and travel, so transit and travel can arbitrage them away (as a finance guy would say).
The key is to levy a tax specifically related to the activity you are trying to regulate/pay for/discourage etc. Thus a toll for use of the bridge is the most efficient and useful, and it cannot be avoided by those who commute in the way you describe, which is indeed obnoxious. With todays technology there would be no need for toll gates/booths. If we went to GPS based toll systems you could have peak load pricing, which would be even more efficient.
roughstuff
As an ELF supporting Greenie, I could get onboard with this....
Like a Data Plan from an internet provider....You pay for what you use.
On my car, I pay outragious Florida insurance rates yet I might drive
it only a few times per year during hurricane season. The insurance
lobby has successfully kept pay-per-mile insrance companies out of
here.