Do the math on gas-tax proposals

The May 9 news article "Another plan to raise gas tax, fees emerges in capital" about the bipartisan coalition's plan to raise $2.4 billion by hiking the state's gas tax and license fees makes me wonder if our state representatives even briefly think about what they are proposing. Taxpayers deserve reasonable taxation that, in this case, makes sense to all the people who have cars. The proposal includes provisions to raise the state gas tax to 44 cents per gallon and registration fees from $98 to $148; and, for electric vehicles, from $17.50 to $1,000.

Let's assume someone owns a car that gets 25 mpg and drives the national average of 12,000 miles a year. That person would pay $148 for a license and 12,000 / 25 * $0.44 = $211.20 a year in gas tax for a total of $358.20. A person with an electric vehicle would pay the license fee of $1,000. So, that doesn't even get close to being a reasonable proposal.

Someone who is driving a car with no emissions would pay nearly three times more than someone with a car getting 25 mpg.

I would suggest that any reasonable proposal must be based on the miles someone travels in the state since these taxes are to support roads. It is nice that gasoline taxes come reasonably close to the number of miles driven in Illinois. For electric cars, the tax needs to be directly based on miles driven per year in Illinois.

This tax could be paid yearly with state income tax. Using the proposed numbers, the per mile rate for electric cars should be about the amount paid by gas cars ($211.20) / 12,000 miles ~ $0.018/mile. Then just make the license fees the same for all cars since that is just a flat fee per vehicle anyway.

Jim Weichel

Naperville