Taxed for tinkering

Just how petty and intrusive can the government get? Ask David and Eileen Wetzel of Decatur, Illinois. The environmentally conscious -- and technically innovative -- couple are wrestling with Illinois tax authorities over their efforts to reduce fossil fuel use by running a 1986 Volkswagen Golf on used vegetable oil.

Illinois law apparently allows no exceptions from the fuel tax for people who run their vehicles on the waste fat from fried foods -- and the authorities take their mandate very seriously. When the Illinois Department of Revenue heard about the Weitzels' canola-mobile, they sent a couple of agents around to pay a call.

"They told me I am required to have a license and am obligated to pay a motor fuel tax," David Wetzel recalled. "Mr. May also told me the tax would be retroactive."

Since the initial visit by the agents on Jan. 4, the Wetzels have been involved in a struggle with the Illinois Department of Revenue. The couple, who live on a fixed budget, have been asked to post a $2,500 bond and threatened with felony charges. ....

Eileen Wetzel, a former teaching assistant, calculated that the bond, designed to ensure that their "business" pays its taxes, would cover the next 51 years at their present usage rate.

The taxes are bad enough for a fixed-income couple creatively relying on alternative fuels. The threats of criminal prosecution are even worse.

A couple of weeks later, David Wetzel received another letter from the revenue department, stating that he "must immediately stop operating as a special fuel supplier and receiver until you receive special fuel supplier and receiver licenses."

This threatening letter stated that acting as a supplier and receiver without a license is a Class 3 felony. This class of felonies carries a penalty of up to five years in prison.

Five years in prison for running your car on used fryolator oil? Surely, they're joking!

But they're not. Illinois government officials make no allowances for tinkerers following the great American tradition of invention. To experiment with alternative fuels, as far as the Department of Revenue is concerned, is to be a refinery -- with all the red tape that entails.

Government -- an institution where common sense need not apply.

Hat tip to Radley Balko at The Agitator.