Americans Strongly Reject Mileage Tax, Gas Tax Hike
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has suggested a mileage tax for drivers as a way to pay for the Obama administration’s plans to spend $556 billion over six years on transportation projects. But Americans nationwide remain firmly opposed to a tax based on the number of miles they drive.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that just 15% of American Adults favor a mileage tax, while 72% are opposed. Another 13% are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
These findings are little changed from February 2009, when 73% opposed a mileage tax.
Americans currently pay 18.4 cents in federal taxes on a gallon of gas, and some members of Congress have suggested raising the gas tax to pay for transportation projects. Just 17% of Americans support that idea. Seventy-four percent (74%) oppose raising the gas tax to help meet new transportation needs.
Those figures, too, are nearly identical to those found in December 2009, after Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood floated the idea of increasing the federal gas tax.
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The survey of 1,000 American Adults was conducted on March 27-28, 2011 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.
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