I think increasing the payroll tax is a mistake. People who don’t own a car should actually be rewarded because they pollute far less, they don’t disable workers, they don’t require traffic police, they don’t emit CO2…
I would replace the payroll tax with a weight tax on huge SUVs.
IMO Kotek has been mostly a lame duck, but these proposals aren’t bad. I would invert the 50-30-20 revenue split between state, county, and city because it’s almost always cities or counties that are creating and maintaining bike and transit infrastructure, while today the state’s largest initiatives are still highway expansions. Highways are so very money-hungry.
I don’t like that they are planning to have both a electric vehicle fee and a per miles charge fee later on. Like it should be one or the other, not both. Otherwise they just need to make the 30$ fee for all vehicles.
Yeah adding a $30 fee specifically to electrics seems asinine, to the point that I’m hoping that is a misunderstanding on the part of the reporter. I don’t mind new fees, but new fees added to electrics that don’t get added to combustions seems regressive.
As for the per-mile charge, I like that and think it should apply to all vehicles. Flat fees don’t sufficiently or accurately compensate for road use, but a mileage charge does. People who are on the road all day should be paying more than people who only drive to get groceries, even if it’s for their job, because they put equivalently more wear on the system.
Once again Oregon refuses to tax businesses or meaningfully shift the burden onto the heavy trucking industries which are demonstrated to cause considerably more damage to roads per mile than passenger cars.
Blue state indeed…
Their implementation of tolling was backassward and regressive: fine those forced to commute and no planned public transportation and infrastructure improvmeents to support moving away from car economy.
That said, removing reference to tolling? Why? The shit implementation was the problem, not because most people think those who use something should pay for it.
Such a goddamn money pit and killing ourselves and the planet in the meantime.
One thing id recommend is factoring vehicle weight into the registration, as weight is one of the big factors that contributes to roadway wear.
This has the added bonus of making Cybertruck owners cry.
It’s disappointing that this funding is coming from regressive sources (gas tax, registration fees, payroll taxes) rather than from the state income tax, since I doubt most working poor in Oregon have the luxury of choosing a car-free work situation (can’t work near public transit or can’t live near public transit or both or perhaps it is possible but the commute is not useful for shift work). But at least they didn’t have to cut funding for other state services I guess?
The greatest trick ever pulled by oil industry PR was to convince leftists that the gas tax is regressive.
A gas tax makes sense because it directly pressures consumer behavior towards using less gas and producing less emissions, but it’s still technically regressive because poor people are more obligated to drive and gas costs are a larger proportion of their budget. The way to make it not regressive would be to redistribute the revenue.
Technically (as in, as a term of art), it is not regressive. Rather, the gas tax is a flat tax. A regressive tax is one whereby the tax rate decreases as the taxed amount increases. A flat tax is one whereby the tax rate remains the same regardless of the taxed amount.
poor people are more obligated to drive and gas costs are a larger proportion of their budget.
Sorry, but unless you are disabled…nobody is obligated to drive.
And in any case, USDOT statistics show wealthy and poor people have very similar cost burden (as percent of household budget) when it comes to gas costs. That is because income strongly correlates with vehicles miles driven; i.e. the wealthier you are the more you drive. That trend is seen in both rural and urban areas.
Sorry, but unless you are disabled…nobody is obligated to drive.
Now hold up.
I’ve had jobs I literally could not get to without driving. As in, public transit did not go from walking distance of where I was to walking distance of where my job was. At all.
I’ve lived in places without grocery stores within walking distance. Without hospitals, dentists, without pretty much anything but a shitty strip mall within walking distance because suburbia sucks.
Look, there are whole suburbs in the United States that open directly into highways. If you try to walk to or from those suburbs you will be arrested because it is illegal to walk on highways. Let me emphasize that one more time: in some places in the US you cannot legally leave your neighborhood without a car.
You can say these aren’t obligations - people can just move or quit their job. But then you’re circling back to the regressive policy issue, because it’s a lot harder to do that when you’re poor.
And “unless you’re disabled”? One in four adults in the US is disabled. And that will inevitably include you if you live long enough to experience the side effects of old age. Yeah, not all disabilities impact one’s ability to walk or take public transit, bet’s not write off disability with an “unless”.
Sorry, but unless you are disabled…nobody is obligated to drive.
There are degrees of obligation. The amount poor people would have to sacrifice in order to not drive is more. That’s how ‘regressiveness’ works.
USDOT statistics show wealthy and poor people have very similar cost burden (as percent of household budget) when it comes to gas costs
This is hard to believe because there is a maximum anyone could reasonably drive, a higher end income would dwarf the cost of that, there is a tradeoff between housing costs and commute distance (best way to avoid driving is living in an expensive city), genuinely wealthy people don’t have to commute anyway, etc. could you link the source on this?
There is tons of stats at data.bts.gov, BLS, and Federal reserve FRED system. Image above is from https://data.bts.gov/stories/s/Transportation-Economic-Trends-Transportation-Spen/ida7-k95k/
Basically, what we find is that wealthier people have bigger carbon footprint. They drive more miles, own more and bigger cars. They also fly more miles. What you are calling “degrees of obligation” is nothing more than a lifestyle choice. The suburbanite driving 50 miles a day in a BMW SUV is the one being impacted here, not the low-income worker taking the bus or driving an old Corolla.
Also note that driving is highly subsidized, and if the gas tax isn’t raised to cover those costs then that money still has to come from somewhere. And that somewhere is other government programs, which low-income are much more highly dependent on.
Transportation spending isn’t just gas costs, I bet a lot of this is accounted for by how much more you can spend on newer, fancier cars, or even air travel.
Also note that driving is highly subsidized, and if the gas tax isn’t raised to cover those costs then that money still has to come from somewhere. And that somewhere is other government programs, which low-income are much more highly dependent on.
Sure, I agree, again, I’m not arguing against a gas tax, I’m in favor of it because it’s necessary, just saying that it should be acknowledged that it disproportionately affects the poor and that fact should be addressed in its implementation.
Indeed, if we want to call the gas tax regressive, then by that standard, the need to own a car to get anywhere is horribly regressive. If we’re actually concerned about low-income people, we should be worrying about how much they’re forced to pay for the gas itself, not the tax on it.
These taxes are also regressive because the cost of shipping goods is likely to be passed along onto the consumer too
It’s super regressive. They should tie all of these to means.
How about a surcharge on giant fuck-off pickup trucks? $5000 for plates.
While I understand they’re paranoid about losing the gas tax when we transition to EVs, it really grinds my gears that I’ve never once seen one of these proposals to fairly tax all vehicles by means other than gas tax. EVs should not be treated as special and certainly shouldn’t be discouraged with higher taxes
It should be based off the vehicle weight. if the premise is that the tax pays for road repairs, ev or gas doesn’t matter, heavier vehicles do more road damage.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but the payroll tax would apply equally to all workers while funding transit, yes? In this case, it functions as an incentive for all people to take transit, since they have already paid for it.
On the whole, this looks like a great step in the right direction. Sure, it could be better - but dont let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Payroll taxes are notoriously regressive. The wealthy can easily dodge salary as capital gains. Even then payroll taxes usually have a cap at some value so the most you could collect from a person getting a 7 figure salary is .02% of the first 100k or whatever the cap is at.
The stiff working at autozone will pay .02% of his gross paycheck.
A fair point. If presented as a package, I would still support these propositions, though. Like, ideally I want everything funded via land value and pigouvian taxes - but I’ll take my wins where I can get them.
seems like they already penalize EVs more. 500 gallons per year is an extra $30. $230 total. EV increases are $72 + a future mileage charge. There’s already $196/year extra EV charge. Close to existing gas tax on 500 gallons ($200).
