Financial Figures

from Valley Business FRONT, Issue 172, January 2023

LewisGale’s Christopher Finley

Virginia's questionable mileage choice program

About six months ago the Commonwealth launched Virginia’s Mileage Choice Program. It’s now being heavily promoted. When anyone shows such enthusiasm over what sounds like a revenue loser, I feel the need to ask “Why?” The answers are hard to find.

In short, this program was supposedly created to make 2020 legislation fair to low mileage drivers. As fuel efficiency became a thing, the Commonwealth started losing money from taxes paid at the pump. So, the Virginia General Assembly tacked on an additional annual registration fee ($19-$109) for electric and 25 mpg or better gas vehicles. It assumes citizens are driving 11,600 miles a year.

There’s no information on the website about how the mileage reimbursement is calculated, or what your final savings are likely to be. There is an extensive list, however, of fees that will be levied if you step out of line. This starts with the $7.50 Late Annual Odometer Image Upload Fee and caps off with the $95 Failure to Return Device charge.

The program requires a minimum deposit of $15 and an agreement to get you hooked up to a device that tracks your every movement (mileage traveled out of state is counted to determine what you owe). Your savings? Don’t know.

To put this in perspective, I spoke to someone who drives a Kia Soul. My pickup doesn’t qualify for the program because it’s too much of a gas hog. Her annual charge is $26 for the highway use fee. Does it make sense for her to jump through the hoops to register for the program, install a device owned and managed by a third party (right, the Commonwealth has delegated this entire program to the private sector), and risk the list of fees to be levied for non-compliance? She doesn’t think so. Neither do I.

What concerns me most about this program is the lack of transparency on what appears to be a money loser. What’s in it for the Commonwealth? I’ll hazard a guess. All that data being collected has a value. The hype doesn’t tell you who’s paying who.