Tax proposal would charge drivers a fee for the miles they drive

why not attach a meter on our chests and in our bowels and tax us on the air we breathe and the excrement that we produce.

Hmm, are they not already paying a gas tax like Canada? Or did they hire a CEO to figure that one out and now have to pay him an exorbinant salary?

it is a money grab by the goverment

Hmmm just another gadget to disconnect.

Some bureaucrats in the Netherlands need to stick a finger in their ear. Their brains are falling out.

Post by me, is not too far off, he would make a good politician, or Revenue Canada employee.

Okay...in Canada we pay provincial/federal tax on our income, taxes through property tax that pay for roadwork/municpal stuff, tax when we purchase our vehicle, various taxes on the fuel for the vehicle (which include greenhouse babble), taxes on maintenance for the vehicle (that include special levies for tires and disposall)...now, some crazy idea, of course coming from the Netherlands, that people should pay a tax on kms., for the privelege of driving a vehicle already taxed to death? Nothing but another cash grab...not here, ever !!

we also pay taxes for those that are too dumb or lazy to work, it is called walfare.

I assume this would be a replacement for some of those taxes, not an addition. So, while not workable as proposed, it would seem to me that applying user related costs does make some sense. If available in Canada I would buy the insurance described.

I agree with the decision to tax in proportion with use. But I would go a step further by charging auto insurance based on use as well. That way retirees like myself would not have to pay such outrageous rates for limited use of automobile.

the dutch can keep their meters and stick em up their nethers(bad pun tax free). as stated by many already, in canada we are already taxed to death thank you very much. i'm already feeling like starting a revolution now that the dictator party is in full power. for all the excesses, mispending and all around incompetence they've exhibited while a minority....now they're a majority...heaven help us. but all that pc bashing aside, stop with the taxes already canada!!. i suspect if there's even a hint of interest in this garbage by ANY party, there WILL be a revolution in canada finally. enough is enough.

as for me's comment? you speak like a typical bigot sir. i've worked for the welfare system and while yes, there are a small minority of abusers, and the system changes over the years have seen fit(and moderately successfully) to eliminate most of the abusers.most are NOT lazy or dumb. welfare is, in the majority of cases the last recourse and let me tell you, you don't live rich off of welfare pally. i've seen so many deserving people trying to get the hell off the system, families with children facing ridicule every day from people like you at school because of their circumstances.nough said or i'll be at this all night. not trying to pick a fight with you me...just trying to edumacate you into looking at teh bigger picture.

give it time someone will figure out how to screw the govt on this. The ETEST is easy to cheat, but this thing won't come here.

i offered a job to an ex friend of mine on welfare, 18 dollars per hour in nova scotia, he had to quit smoking dope, he refused the job and called workers suckers for paying tax. i was frustrated, i showed him a six figure bank account deposit slip from the bank, he then asked me to buy him a fridge, i told him to get a job (his fridge broke down a few weeks before) and he constantly complains about money. he had two children on welfare, the oldest one is 17, the next one is 12, they are expecting another child. he threw the oldest child out because next month he turns 18 and the baby bonus is gone. i think that people on welfare should be sterilized before recieving benefits, and there should be a time limit on how long that they recieve benifits, like EI, i was once on EI, i understand poverty, i don't understand laziness and stupidity, which many of theme on it are.

And here I was thinking we're all idiots in Canada because we tolerate the blatant ripping off of our tax moneys by the bureaucracy when along comes an article like this and points out that other countries can be even stupider than we are!!!

As already pointed out the Dutch have exorbitant gas taxes which not only accrue based on mileage, but also penalise those who drive larger, heavier vehicles and/or have lead feet.

Further, why do we allow bureaucrats and engineers sit down to dream up stupidities like this?

If you must quadruple tax the public do it with less expensive (and failure prone) technology. Ever hear of an odometer? Read it when the registration is renewed and charge the driver pro-rata based on his driving the year before - you might want to do some forward trend averaging and project the next years' mileage, but you wouldn't need a GPS-based box that can be defeated by sticking a foil chip bag over it.

You have to wonder if the overhead of monitoring and maintaining the system is more or less than the efficiency gains of a pay-per-use system. The variables they are proposing seem easy to critique on a policy level and easy to argue on an individual level. This would lead to many small complaints and a huge bureaucracy to deal with those complaints.

I think that the program might not be worthwhile, though I'd have to see the details.

Perhaps the gas tax we already have is a good mix of low overhead and pay-per-use efficiency.

Here's a solution.....
Just kill or jail all of the greenpeacers out there and their retarded green ideas they want to foist on us!
Declare Greenpeace a terrorist organization and take away their charity status to make donors ineligible to receive a tax deduction.

This current Dutch gov't needs to replace the billions they are losing by the closing of much of the red-light district and coffee houses, esp to foreigners. This will be a joke in A'dam, which is full of 1-way streets, so how do you avoid driving on some of these "high-tax roads"? And we already supposedly receive some insurance reduction by driving less miles, and in a less congested area than the GTA. And our gas taxes that make our gas cheaper to the US than to us is already a sign that we are over-paying for the lousy condition of our roads and highways. And as for welfare and EI peeps being thieves, have you ever actually seen anybody on the road construction crews doing any work? I see nobody, or lots of them in groups talking or sitting down and doing nothing mostly.... And that is our tax dollars too. No wonder it takes so long to get road work done !! And just one of these guys earns more than 3 peeps on EI, let alone welfare. This tax idea is absurd in Holland, and even more so here in Canada, which is why it just might happen .....

@Peter, I applaud your solution!

@me, I understand exactly what you are saying, and I suopport your views about welfare. Oh, by the way, just for information, it is "i" before "e" except after "c".

If the government wants to raise money by taxing private transportation, fine. In the long run, it's good public policy to get people to ride bikes and use public transportation. But to invent a new (expensive) way of collecting taxes (rather than say increasing gas tax, parking or tax on new cars, which are already user-based taxes) is just plain inefficient. If nothing else, this is government being stupid and spineless.