Recently the Dutch government passed regulation to start implementing a so-called km-tax. This means that instead of the old fashion road-tax and taxation on buying a new car, the taxes will be paid based on the milage you make with your car. To do this, every car will get a small system built in that measures the distances travelled, routes taken and sents that information to a collection agency. The collections agency aggregates all that info and then sents you a bill.
There are some pro’s for this way of collecting taxes:
- You pay for the usage of the roads, not for owning a car.
- The prices of cars will go down
However, there are in my opinion very big issues with this system. The most important being the privacy issue which is currently being downplayed a lot by the Government. At the end of the day the information of all your travels will be registered somewhere. There is absolute no guarantee that this information will not be used for any other purposes than billing somewhere in the future. Allthough the Government may say that this will only be used for billing, we all know that as soon as they find another reason for it, this information will be used. There is absolutely no way that the regular Dutch civilian will be able to influence a decision like this later on.
The other big issue is that a lot of the road taxes were given to the states. When these road taxes are no longer taxated, the states will receive less income. And that is something that they are absolutely not willing to do. The first ideas about other forms of taxation to compensate the road taxation have allready been heard. Possible forms can be a resident tax or some other form. If these residents taxes are implemented, that will mean that we’ll be double taxed instead of, as the Government says, a tax-neutral change in taxation. You’ll be taxed for living somewhere, and you’ll be taxed for the use of your car. This is a flagrant disregard of everything that has always been promised regarding the new form of taxation.
So to recap:
- You’ll be followed everywhere
- You’ll pay at least double what you did before…
Well.. good plan, or not? I’m sure it will be a good plan for the Government, but for the Dutch civilians, this will be another way to just increase taxes, without getting anything in return.
A clear example that the Dutch government are really out of touch with what their constituents want….
Popularity: 17%
This is simply astounding. I can’t imagine anything like this ever passing in the U.S. (although there are some politicians who would love to try it).
I just did a quick search and found this news article which says the data from the kilometer tax meters can be used for the “security of the state” in the “prevention, detection and pursuit of criminal acts”. I bet the government will interpret those phrases as broadly as possible.
You make absolutely the same point as i tried. The definition of “security of the state” is absolutely too free to get a clear understanding of the risks we run as civilians.. Governments all over the world have shown that the definition of ‘ security of the state’ can be as broad as they feel like at that time… Well, we’ll just have to see how this turns out!