Sales Tax vs Gas Tax

McDonnell proposes to decouple use of the transportation system from taxation to pay for it. In essence, this means raising taxes on those who drive little—or not at all—to subsidize those who drive a lot. This is a disturbing idea from an equity perspective, since unsurprisingly the wealthy are far more likely to own cars and drive lots of miles than the poor...This proposal is also troubling from the perspective of economic efficiency. The obvious reason is that it no longer provides a behavioral signal to discourage driving. Don’t get me wrong, auto travel has tremendous individual benefits, but as I’ve written in the past, collectively we overindulge in it because drivers create all sorts of costs that are borne by society and for which they don’t directly pay (e.g. pollution, congestion, much of the cost of accidents, and road damage)...

An End to the Gas Tax?