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Originally Posted by xcel
Hi JeromeP:
___Nicely written …
___I have read in the past that road damage is proportional to the 4th power of GVWR. Although I never bookmarked the study, it says truck traffic no matter how many wheels in the running gear are far more damaging to roads then an Insight, HCH, or Prius I/II. Oregon is only looking at this as a tax grab I am quite positive. It won’t be long and Oregon will emulate fortress Europe w/ $6.00 a gallon for fuel or the equivalent given the tax and no one will drive anywhere … Sounds like I won’t be moving to that state anytime soon  Given your location, doesn’t Oregon have some kind of law that you cannot fill your own fuel tank? Just passing on rumor and innuendo if this is not the case. |
I'm not absolving Washington State of not having some screwy tax code (and we are overtaxed in numerous areas), but as a sales tax state, at least we know where we are going to pay our tax and don't get hit with an income tax on top of sales tax. The unfortunate thing with that is that in some areas we have a sales tax approaching 10%. Consider that the base state sales tax is either 6% or 7% and anything above that are taxes that get remitted to counties, cities and public transit authorities. So, lots of very local governments have plenty of funding coming in from sales taxes.
Sales taxes are usually very low overhead. Businesses collect the tax when they make a sale and then remit it on a monthly or quarterly basis to the Department of Revenue. It is very low overhead, and hard to screw up. Washington State DOR is much smaller than the respective PNW states DORs because our tax collection comes from businesses exclusively, and rarely includes individuals. As soon as a state starts to collect tax via income, then the overhead required to collect it becomes a bureaucracy in and of itself. This goes back to overhead in tax collecting eating up the revenue before it ever gets to its final destination.
The same general policy applies to per gallon taxing of gas. Low overhead, merchant driven, low number of contacts to collect from. Washington State probably has the highest gas tax in the nation. And if not we are probably 2nd or 3rd. I'm not a happy camper about that because only about 15-20% of our gas tax actually ends up in pavement and improvements. The rest goes into the black hole of the general fund. I can't help but imaging how independent our DOT would be if they got all of the gas tax. Our roads would ideally be well maintained and intersection and highway improvements would just happen. If that were the case I wouldn't mind the gas tax so much.
You're right about trucks. They do indeed do the most damage, but this goes back to what is done with gas taxes. Truckers and trucking companies pay fuel tax also. Considering how grand the scale of gas taxes is, you'd think that with all that revenue coming in, if they were to take 100% of it and turn it into pavement and traffic flow improvements, nobody would be talking about the damage trucks do to the roads because the roads would be being repaired with the funds that all of us are paying in gas taxes.
About Oregon:
Living in a state that boarders Oregon I can confirm that they do indeed prevent you from pumping your own gas. I'm not sure why, I've heard only rumors, but rumors sometimes are true. By having station attendants pump gas the state is artificially creating service sector jobs that ideally anyone can do. Pumping gas is an unnecessary and otherwise phased out job in the rest of the nation. How much this reduces the unemployment rate state wide, well, I can't help but question its impact. I do know that it increases fuel prices.
Oregon is very liberal, I think more so than Washington which is suffering from a liberal lapse of common sense right now. Consider that Oregon has used their tax code to influence people's behaviors. The fed has done it, so have other states. There isn't a government entity which hasn't used the tax code to influence people's behavior. The point is, the more you do it, the more you start to look like "Fortress Europe". And the less independent and productive your citizens are and the less vibrant your economy. It is a vicious circle that I hope states figure out sooner rather than later. Tax code should be used to collect the bare minimum of funds necessary to provide the barest minimum of services, or rather instead of services, infrastructural maintenance and improvements.
For those of you that don't agree keep this in mind. The higher your fuel taxes are, meaning higher fuel prices are as compared to other areas or indexes, the fewer discretionary miles people will drive. Meaning, that travel outside of what is absolutely necessary, such as pleasure trips, goes way down. This happened when fuel prices were going up and up over the past couple of years, and that is what happened when Washington's gas tax went up another $.05 last year.