An Illinois state lawmaker is pushing for his state to implement a proposed road mileage tax, despite similar tax proposals facing significant opposition in recent years.
Democratic Illinois State Rep. Ram Villivalam introduced a piece of legislation in early March, called the Road Usage Charge Act, which would create a pilot program to study the effectiveness of a road usage charge to tax residents per mile driven. Some have warned that the adoption of similar tax proposals could potentially impose unnecessary costs on American taxpayers and even lead to violations of personal privacy.
“This is all stemming from more and more people in Illinois using electric vehicles, meaning they don’t have to pay for gas taxes, which in Illinois are the second highest in the nation,” Dylan Sharkey, assistant editor at the Illinois Policy Institute, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “What this proposal would do is establish a pilot program exploring a tax for drivers by the mile, regardless of what type of car they have. So that would involve people reporting their mileage each year, some people even having devices in their car tracking how far they drive instead of reporting it, and it’s really going after electric drivers who are avoiding gas taxes. We’re paying the second-highest gas taxes in the nation, so the thought that we need to give more money is just greed.”
In 2019, Illinois state lawmakers introduced a per-mile tax proposal similar to Villivalam’s recently-introduced bill, but the tax proposal was pulled from consideration just days after its introduction due to intense opposition. The same year, Democratic Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker doubled his state’s gas tax from its previous 19-cent per-gallon rate. Illinois drivers now pay one of the highest gas taxes nationwide — second only to California — at 67.1 cents per gallon, according to a January report from NerdWallet.
Many have criticized the idea of vehicle miles traveled (VMT) taxes, claiming that they not only would impose undue costs on taxpayers but also could constitute an invasion of privacy. Several advocacy groups have opposed VMT taxes in the past, including the American Civil Liberties Union, which previously argued that the use of a mileage tracking device would pose “serious privacy concerns.”
“There are a couple of problems that come with them [per-mileage road taxes],” Stephen Slivinski, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, told the DCNF. “A lot of times, when these are proposed, they are proposed as an add-on to the existing amount of taxes that are being collected, to the fuel tax, and that’s not a good proposal. And the second part of it is, what do you do once you have the money? And of course, you can ask the same question of governments when they’re collecting the existing fuel tax. A lot of times, they’re not doing a really good job of spending the money.”
“In a case like Illinois, that has nationally one of the highest per-gallon fuel taxes in the country, it really is incumbent upon state legislature or, more specifically, the taxpayers of Illinois, to ask the question of the government, ‘are you actually spending this money efficiently?’” Slivinski added.
High tolls are also a concern for some Illinois drivers, as the state had the 7th-highest average maximum passenger vehicle fee on non-interstate toll roads nationwide at $0.65 per mile, according to a LendingTree study published in May 2024.
“There’s definitely been public disapproval for it [a per-mile road tax] in the past, and it’s only a matter of time to see if people speak up again as taxes and gas taxes are even higher now than they were in 2019,” Sharkey told the DCNF.
Proponents of similar VMT tax proposals have claimed that the taxes could help address a loss of tax revenue as more drivers opt for either more fuel-efficient cars or electric vehicles.
“There’s some question right now of whether or not this [tax proposal] would replace the gas tax or be in addition to [Illinois’ gas tax],” Sharkey told the DCNF. “In one of the hearings, they said in the short run that this [tax proposal] would not raise enough money to replace the gas tax, meaning that for at least some period of time you would have to have people paying one or the other. They say in the long run it’ll bring in more revenue, but again, Illinoisans are already paying the second-highest gas tax in the country, so it seems like they’re getting plenty of revenue as it is. It is hard to believe that Illinois would ever be short of money for roads.”
While on the campaign trail in 2018, Pritzker signaled that he would be open to the idea of a VMT tax during an interview with the Daily Herald.
“It’s only fair, right, that if you’re on a road and traveling on that road that you should pay your fair share on the road like everybody else is paying,” Pritzker told the Herald in 2018.
Pritzker’s office has since denied claims that the governor has plans to implement a mileage tax, with Pritzker spokesperson Alex Gough telling Capitol News Illinois in January 2023 that the governor “never proposed a vehicle mileage tax and has no intention of doing so now.”
Some Illinois residents have already begun signaling opposition to the tax proposal, ABC7 Chicago reported Thursday.
“It feels like more of an attack that we have to keep paying for this and that,” Illinois driver Sandi Diaz told ABC7 Chicago.
Villivalam’s office did not respond to a request for comment from the DCNF.
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