[Armageddon]

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070307/133704.shtml

I think I now can say I have heard it all.

[mercurygirl]

Good quote from the comments:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '"')People are bastards. They are all bastard covered bastards with bastard filling."

[emersonbiggins]

This is a total non-issue. You can't fill your car with vegetable oil for the same reason I can't fill my TDI Jetta with my dad's farm diesel - e.g. the lack of motor fuel tax revenue for maintenance and repair of the highway system that YOU use.

Now, I do think the government should make provisions for taxing alternative fuels, because they [gas taxes] are the primary means of funding the road system. By not paying them, you are externalizing the damage your car inflicts upon the rest of the motoring public. If enough people start using untaxed fuel, it only speeds up the inevitability of the system's collapse.

This, sadly, is another case of the government being caught 20 years behind the trend.

[I_Like_Plants]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('emersonbiggins', '
')Now, I do think the government should make provisions for taxing alternative fuels, because they [gas taxes] are the primary means of funding the road system. By not paying them, you are externalizing the damage your car inflicts upon the rest of the motoring public. If enough people start using untaxed fuel, it only speeds up the inevitability of the system's collapse.

This, sadly, is another case of the government being caught 20 years behind the trend.

[mercurygirl]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Raphael', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mercurygirl', 'G')ood quote from the comments:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '"')People are bastards. They are all bastard covered bastards with bastard filling."

[katkinkate]

All bastards is bastards, but some bastards is [b]Bastards[/b].[i]

[Newsseeker]

Momma always said, "Bastard is as bastard does."

[cynicalheretic]

This isn't okay, this purely fucking wrong. Our government is a worthless piece of shit and should be set on fire after I wipe my ass with the flag. <<rant done>>

[I_Like_Plants]

Frankly, it really does just sound like more of the same old "the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing" routine always found in US government.

Now, the fuel..... it's bad enough knowing your neighbor has a bunch of oily rags sitting around, or doesn't cap their paint cans well, how about a full-on distillery or whatever's involved, with 50-gallon drums and all that?

Hell, I'd be a bit nervous if they were running a large coffee roasting operation, much less brewing up stuff intended to burn.

But this gets to the point - operating a MOTOR VEHICLE involves large amounts of liquid fuel meant to burn and burn well. Whether it came up out of the ground or out of your local frypit, it's boo-coo kcals in easy to burn form.

As opposed to burning a relatively tiny amount of kcals in your legs, which don't generally catch fire or explode.

This danger was well-known in the early days of cars, which is why really old houses with garages have the garages well away from the house. You know the type, house with nice porch, railing, steps, maybe a hanging chair, few plants, and perhaps a sleeping dog out front, and a skinny little driveway going back to a little garage way in back in the corner of the yard. Yes, yard, a large back yard, people used to grow gardens in those. The garage was well back so if the darned car or the stuff used to keep it running caught fire, you could put it out and the house was not in all that much danger.

Those brewing up their own biofuel are pioneers, and it's a niche market - even with all the fast food we eat, there's just not enough surplus oil to run more than a tiny portion of the cars on the road. The laws against doing this kind of thing in your residential garage are there for a reason, which is safety, not necessarily some evil oil company plot.

It still really makes me want to go bike-only though.

[cynicalheretic]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('I_Like_Plants', '
')This danger was well-known in the early days of cars, which is why really old houses with garages have the garages well away from the house. You know the type, house with nice porch, railing, steps, maybe a hanging chair, few plants, and perhaps a sleeping dog out front, and a skinny little driveway going back to a little garage way in back in the corner of the yard. Yes, yard, a large back yard, people used to grow gardens in those. The garage was well back so if the darned car or the stuff used to keep it running caught fire, you could put it out and the house was not in all that much danger.

[The_Toecutter]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'N')ow, I do think the government should make provisions for taxing alternative fuels, because they [gas taxes] are the primary means of funding the road system. By not paying them, you are externalizing the damage your car inflicts upon the rest of the motoring public. If enough people start using untaxed fuel, it only speeds up the inevitability of the system's collapse.

[emersonbiggins]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('The_Toecutter', '
')The typical tractor trailer causes thousands of times more road wear than a passenger car. The trucking industry is paying nowhere near their fair share; if they did, we might not even need gas taxes to keep the roads running given the presence of other fees such as vehicle registration.

Tax revenue is one of the reasons the EV was fought. Oil is a lucrative source of money for big government just the same as it is for big business.

[The_Toecutter]

I personally think we should pay for what we use. The reality is that gasoline, when you account for all the subsidies, defense spending, oil wars, along with personal and property damage caused by its use, is actually very expensive, the equivalent of $10+ per gallon. The reality is that car per car, roads are very cheap. It's the semi trucks that make them expensive to maintain. Mile for mile, if we got rid of all the subsidies associated with car culture, battery electric cars, B100 cars, and the like, would still be extremely cheap to run counting in road infrastrucutre costs, electrics still even cheaper than the cars of today if they'd use NiMH batteries. However, mass transit will always, mile for mile, be cheaper if done on the same scale.

If we'd have a widespread system of inexpensive, convenient, and widespread electric trolleys in place as we had in the first half of the 20th century, people would use them in preference to cars. You wouldn't need to penalize people for driving because they'd automatically gravitate to any option that's cheaper and roughly as convenient. But our government doesn't want to compromise economic growth by allowing consumers to reduce their use of expensive gasoline automobiles, which require high amounts of maintenance and generate high amounts of tax and profit. This is the same government that allowed the auto and oil industry to tear this mass transit down in the 1940s, to force consumer spending so that they could grow the economy out of the depression. This is the same government that subsidizes suburbia while penalizing city dwellers.

Waste vegetable oil can displace a noticable portion of our oil consumption. Roughly the equivalent of 3 billion gallons is dumped into landfills each year in the U.S. We use about 40 billion gallons of petroleum diesel and 140 billion gallons of gasoline for road transport each year in the U.S. So WVO's impact may not be large, but it is noticable and has some significance.

Any government, local or federal, that is willing to go after people for using alternative fuels is a government that needs a change in leadership, if not a complete dismantling altogether. We live in a country where local and federal governments are more worried about money, than about any of the crisises we face as a direct result of fossil fuel consumption. Why? WE get shafted with the crisis, but the bureaucrats and business execs get to make money in good times or bad. We could address peak oil, prevent resource wars, live sustainably without sacrificing much of anything, and even prevent a dieoff, if only big government and big business would get the fuck out of the way and let rational people do as they will and put forth those solutions which have shown themselves to be workable and superior to status quo...

[emersonbiggins]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('The_Toecutter', 'W')e could address peak oil, prevent resource wars, live sustainably without sacrificing much of anything, and even prevent a dieoff, if only big government and big business would get the fuck out of the way and let rational people do as they will and put forth those solutions which have shown themselves to be workable and superior to status quo...

[gg3]

There's a REALLY REALLY SIMPLE solution to this one.

Create a sales tax category for waste vegetable oil (WVO) sold as a fuel.

The tax level would be the same per gallon as for any other motor fuel.

Restaurants would collect the tax from their customers and pay it along with their regular sales tax payments for sales tax collected on burgers & fries.

Here's how it works:

Restaurants are already collecting sales tax for the food they sell. Thus they get the regular monthly or quarterly form from the state sales tax agency. To engage in the business of sellling WVO, they simply inform the state sales tax agency, and now they get an extra page each time. (This works the same way for other specific categories of goods: for example my company gets an extra form for the electronic waste recycling fee on any device we sell with a screen large enough to qualify for the special fee.)

The extra page has places for the following information: a) Gallons sold at wholesale for purposes of resale (that is, sold to companies that in turn sell it to end-users). b) Gallons sold at retail (that is, sold directly to end-users). c) Gallons disposed as waste. Then it has lines showing the amount of tax per gallon that has to be calculated. The state agency could collect the federal fuel taxes easily and pass them along to the federal government: after all, state tax agencies do this all the time and it is no big deal for them.

Wholesale sales are tax-exempt: the company you sell it to, will in turn sell it to an end-user, and will collect the sales tax at that point. (This is normal for all categories of goods: I buy PBX equipment from the regional Panasonic distribution center, I do not pay a sales tax on that because I'm selling it to my clients. who are the end-users or retail purchasers. My clients do pay a sales tax, which I collect and pay to the state.)

Retail is taxable. Just like the burgers and fries the restaurant normally sells. However the tax in this case is not a percentage of the price, it's a tax per gallon. Thus it doesn't matter if the restaurant gives the stuff away or charges me a nominal price or even a buck a gallon: the tax is the same.

So I fill up my two 5-gallon cans, total of ten gallons, and the restaurant hands me the bill which I happily pay. Including the motor fuel tax.

Now the restaurant has collected the motor fuel tax on my purchase, so when they total up their monthly sales tax report, they already have the money on hand to make the payment.

The restaurant also has receipts from its sales at wholesale, and those are marked tax-free (once again, the company they sell it to will sell it to end-users, who will pay the tax at that point). This information gets entered into the appropriate box and the restaurant pays no tax on that quantity of WVO

And the restaurant also has receipts from its waste oil recycling company for the amount that they've had to take away as waste. The amounts from these receipts get entered into the correct box, and of course the restaurant doesn't pay tax for that either. The waste oil recycler, if s/he's turning WVO into fuel, will of course collect a motor fuel tax from her/his customers.

Problem solved. Best part is, it all works with the existing sales tax system that is already in place. And the end-users don't have to set up business entities as "fuel producers."

We get to drive our cars on WVO, the restaurants get to sell it to us in their normal course of business, the state and federal governments get to collect their tax payments. It's all nice and neat and follows existing business practices all the way across. Win-win solution all'round.

Hey folks, write to your state legislators and propose this, OK?

---

Notes:

What about cheating? Same as for any other cheating on sales tax. Look, a crooked restaurant can keep some of its cash sales "off the books" and pay no taxes on those, and crookedly keep the monies they charged to their customers as "sales tax" for those. In other words, if someone's going to steal, they're already stealing. Sales tax agencies have routine measure they use to catch this sort of stuff, regardless of the product being sold, so adding one more product to a restaurant's menu (WVO) doesn't change the enforcement burden.

What about the $2,500 bond? IMHO it ought to be waived for cases of this type: casual sales of WVO as a sideline to a restaurant biz. However, if the state insists on collecting it (after all, they make $$ on the interest from all of those!), it adds up to 50-cents per gallon for the first 5,000 gallons. OK, so then the restaurant can charge the end-users 50-cents a gallon, earn it back pretty darn quickly, and after that the price is pure profit. For tiny restaurants that can't afford to put up the lump sum (there are probably a few out there), it could be paid proportionally along with sales, so they can "pay as they go."

What about restaurant owners or employees using it in their own cars? Handle that the same way as when they eat lunch or dinner at their own establishment. Proper business bookkeeping says: the owner writes a check from his personal account to the company, or pays with cash or plastic, and of course pays the sales tax on the meal at that point, just like any other customer. Owners and employees may get discounts, but they still pay the sales tax. Same case here.

What about householders collecting their WVO every time they make fried chicken, and adding that to the mix? No tax, sorry, that's household production for household use, same as growing tomatos in the back yard and making tomato sauce with them. You don't pay sales tax on your home-grown, home-made tomato sauce.

What about electric vehicles? You're already paying a tax on electricity. If need be, increase the tax to cover the shortfall made up from declining gasoline taxes. Make the tax usage-sensitive: for example, your first so-and-so-many KWH per month are charged at normal tax rate. Anything above that is charged at the higher tax rate. This would also become an incentive for conservation by people who normally run high electric bills.

As an alternative, install KWH meters on the charging inputs of EVs (built into the vehicle, like the sensors for the odometer) and have EV owners pay a yearly tax to DMV accordingly. There might be a button on the dashboard to let the driver check the amount so s/he can put it in the bank each month to save for the total. And of course the DMV would check yearly at registration time, to be sure the totals match.

Why not charge for miles driven? Because that creates a perverse incentive and cross-subsidizes inefficient vehicles. By taxing the actual energy used, there is always an incentive to drive a more efficient vehicle. Even if the taxes per KWH or per gallon have to increase every year to make up for the revenue lost as vehicles become more efficient, the incentive is still there for buying the most efficient vehicle and using the least energy to run it.

Questions, comments?

----

I think I'm going to go down to the California State Board of Equalization (our state sales tax agency; and yes they really are nice people to deal with) and make inquiries. And then I'm going to see about meeting with a manager or other official to propose exactly this system if there's not something reasonable & practical in place already.

-----

As for the state where those people are facing a felony charge:

What I would do is make an arrangement with the restaurant to start acting as if the above system is already in place, and then one party or the other (the restaurant or the customer) keeps the collected tax monies in a separate bank account with which to pay the tax bill.

Then take the state to court for a declaratory judgement to make it so.

There should be a lawyer out there somewhere who would take this pro-bono.

[Newsseeker]

Sounds plausible, the government just wants its moolah. Vegetable oil can never work on a mass scale for obvious reasons, though.

[gg3]

No one single energy source will work for everyone all the time. And there are no magic bullets.

This is going to be a century of invention & experimentation. Many smaller solutions for smaller groups of people. If we make it through to the point where we have commercially-viable fusion power and radically improved batteries, the transportation infrastructure may settle on those universally, instead of liquid fuels.

In order to make this work, we need to have the business and government administrative systems operate flexibly and use existing normal methods & procedures, rather than creating a patchwork of overly-complex nonsense. Letting restaurants charge a motor fuel tax on WVO (rather than making the end-users set themselves up as businesses) is an example. KWH meters on the charging inputs of electric cars is another.

The KWH meter on the electric car doesn't care if the power comes from a fossil fuel plant, a nuclear plant, or PV panels on your roof. And while we might want to have a tax credit for those PVs to offset the tax somewhat, as an incentive to install PVs, the vehicle still pays for its use of the roads.

Bicycles and pedestrians will always use the roads free of charge, there is no way to tax them for it, nor should there be. Wagons drawn by animals (horses etc.) might also ride for free up to the point where they are the majority of vehicles on the road, at which point I'll have to think of something new:-)

BTW, these tax-related moments brought to you by: Libertarian Democrats! We don't object to taxes or government per-se, we just want them to operate sensibly and efficiently!