According to envirotech, drivers in the Netherlands would pay €0.03 per 1 kilometer ($0.07 per mile) with the tax expected to increase every year until 2018. Drivers of trucks, commercial vehicles and bigger cars will be expected to pay more due to the larger amounts of carbon dioxide their vehicles produce.
In a statement from the Netherlands Transport Ministry, the program would have every vehicle on the road fitted with a special GPS tracker that will track the movements of a car and send the data to a billing agency.
While this program may turn out to be a heavy burden on business drivers and could potentially cost the Dutch government more than €1 billion ($1.5 billion) a year in tax income, it should hopefully reduce traffic congestion in the Netherlands, cut down on carbon emissions, and prevent traffic accidents.
Our take? While such a program may work in Europe where driving can easily be replaced with walking or public transportation, it might not be as successful in the United States. Studies have shown that the average American spends about 2 hours a day in their car driving about 1,000 miles a month. If a green tax were to be implemented in the United States, the government could stand to gain a large amount of money. However given the way things are in the United States, we doubt drivers would approve of or be able to afford such a tax.