States have been discussing mileage taxes to fund road construction and maintenance but it is now up for discussion at the federal level:

Shuster rejected the idea of raising the nation’s 18.4 cents-per-gallon gasoline tax, now the primary method of paying for road, bridge and mass transit projects. Besides a mileage tax, he said other funding methods include higher taxes on energy exploration and bringing back corporate profits earned overseas…

A vehicle miles tax has never been considered on the federal level because of objections to the concept of tracking how many miles people drive to assess and collect the levy. There have been some state- and local-level experiments.

A partisan dispute in Congress over tax increases is clouding potential action on a long-term highway bill backed by companies including Caterpillar Inc. (CAT) It’s also heightening the risk that the U.S. will run out of money to pay for projects later this year…

Groups led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the biggest business lobby, want to prevent a repeat of 2012, when proposals to fund roads, bridges and mass transit for six years sputtered over bipartisan opposition to raising the gasoline tax. The shorter-term measure, which used general tax revenue to keep highway construction going, expires Sept. 30…

Lawmakers in both parties, including Republican Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri and Democratic Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, already have said they doubt Congress can forge a consensus on the tax-financing issues and pass a bill that authorizes programs for five or six years as industry groups want.

It sounds like a conclusion is still a ways off. At the same time, there are powerful interests involved and a deadline for funding coming up. It would be interesting to see what happens if this gets instituted by the federal government before states make their own decisions. Could drivers end up getting taxed for their mileage by both Washington and their state capitals?