aklim you misunderstand again. its not an if its an excise tax. it by definition is. there is no wiggle room here otherwise ANYONE who did not buy fuel would be evading the tax. Since you are not breaking the law simply by not using the fuel (ride a bike or walk etc.. or take the bus or train) its an excise tax. its NOT ILLEGALY to evade this tax!!! its an OPTIONAL tax just like the EXTRA taxes on alcohol or cigarettes or luxury cars.
There is no legal or mathmatically difference between adding veg oil to your car and getting an effective 50mpg and buying a car that gets 50mpg without the veg oil. Now you are talking semantics. the result is the same they both use the SAME amount of diesel and therfore FAIRLY pay the SAME amount of diesel tax.
You can not bidirect your argument like this and retain any sense of reason. ie either works both ways or not at all.
If you can be criminalized for using veg oil to reduce your need of diesel THEN you are claiming that if you drive you MUST buy fuel to pay the tax AND that if you buy LESS than a certain mpg of fuel you are evading the tax. There is no other way around this. you can not pick half of one argument and mix it with half or another argument and then justify the results.
Veg oil is not taxed (extra tax there is sales tax off course) this is NOT the veg oil users problem - not one little tiny bit. the ONLY legal solution is for the state to add a fuel tax to veg oil (lets see how well that goes over :-) hehe
so it is NOT an untaxed fuel it is simple veg oil that your using as fuel. Calling it an untaxed fuel (as in the illegal kind of fuel) is like calling someone a tax evader for burning wood in there fireplace to heat there home instead of buying the tax heating oil. its silly. Just think about it for a moment.
"it does make someone else who is trying to circumvent the tax think."
that is your problem you think is is criminal to circumvent this tax. ITS NOT. its not an apportioned tax. its a excise or ITEM TAX if you do not purchase that item you are not evading anything. You are simply not purchasing that item. Show me the law that says my car MUST run only on taxed gasoline or diesel ? there IS a law that says you can not use the offered offroad diesel on the road. But where does it say if its not gasoline or diesel your not allowed to use it (that would outlaw all electrically driven cars BTW :-)
"If that tax goes to fund road projects, that is another"
It does not matter what the tax goes toward. Our government already consumes 100+ times more money than it needs. in a properly run government the people would come first and whatever it left would go to pay. in THIS government the money goes to pay and then the little that is left is griped about as not being enough to fix things.
This is am OPTIONAL tax. it ONLY applies to you if you BUY the fuel. period. Does not matter if you USE the roads or not does not matter where the taxes go.
Its no more illegal to put veg oil in your car to Reduce the amount of diesel you use (and also avoiding the tax as a unimportant consequence) as it is to MAKE your own toys and furniture so you can avoid paying the in store prices (and the again irrelevant in the larger picture sales tax from that lost sale)
its only tax evasion if you BUY the item in the store and then do not pay tax for it (actually the store would be the tax evader not the customer)
There are only 2 tax brackets that are mandatory in this country. Federal Taxes and State Taxes (I love how the feds have SEPARATED the federal taxes into individual federal taxes so when you calculate a refund or deductions it only effects one and not the other cute ehh most companies pull this kind of crap anymore just look at a phone or power bill)
and MOST of the time EVEN THOSE taxes are not mandatory. IE if you do not work you do not have to pay them.
The only "taxes" we have to pay for using roads that are mandatory and they also have nothing to do with the fuel used is "tolls" THOSE are use this road tax.
I love it when the PA Turnpike announce the rate hike and said its just a few cents a mile till you do the math and its an exactly 66% increase in the tolls :-) cute
Chris Taylor
http://www.nerys.com/