Posted on 05/07/2021 10:46:34 AM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Nowadays, the government needs more than gasoline taxes to fund its vast mission to expand, replace and preserve transportation routes in Washington state.
Legislators have drawn up a menu of 33 tax and fee increases under the proposed 16-year Forward Washington plan, updated last week by Senate Transportation Committee Chair Steve Hobbs, D-Lake Stevens. That way, perhaps no single cost will provoke enough public fury to torpedo the plan.
“Nobody likes to be taxed, but we also want to make this fair as we spread it across different sectors,” Hobbs said Friday.
His approach holds direct gas-tax hikes to 9.8 cents per gallon.
That’s just beneath a 10-cent psychological barrier some colleagues have asked to avoid, Hobbs said. But more negotiations could send it higher, he said.
In 2015, the Legislature wound up boosting gasoline taxes 11.9 cents over two years, to a total 67.8 cents state and federal tax, now sixth-highest in the country.
By charging for car tabs, food deliveries, fuels, auto parts — even higher fees to change your driver’s license picture — the state could raise $15.3 billion to go with $2.75 billion in bond sales, for a total $18.7 billion.
Republicans have been tweeting “#Taxapalooza,” to lampoon the combined cost of proposed gasoline taxes, low-carbon fuel standards, and a “cap-and-trade” regimen to suppress statewide carbon use. Legislative bills remain alive in the 2021 session scheduled to end April 25, but Hobbs doubts all three will pass.
A Washington Research Council economist has estimated cap-and-trade equates to 18 cents a gallon in 2023, which would gradually increase. (Transportation budgets, including stream culverts, electrification, and walk-bike routes, would receive about 70% of that.) The Washington Farm Bureau is opposed.
(Excerpt) Read more at seattletimes.com ...
Maybe they can stop putting fuel taxes into the double dipping general fund
True. They can just end the sales tax they impose on their own highway projects.
PING!
Obviously an anti-inflation move. s/
Tell the Orange Pflacky that Joe Biden LIED when he said that taxes would not be raised on people earning under $400,000 a year.
They will call their tax increases “fees” and claim they aren’t raising taxes.
Everything winds up in the General Fund - back when the state was pushing for a state Lottery they said it was ‘for the kids’ the money going to schools - well that didn’t last long and all that money went directly into - yep - the GF. They can tax all they want but when people run out of money to pay those taxes, i.e. they hold back on their buying what will they do? Right, raise taxes.
Slow Joe and friends are giving a whole new meaning to the term ‘rape, pillage and plunder’ ! They’re out doing the f’n Visigoths!!
That Whataburger just jumped to $25.
I really hope the Biden supporters keep their bumper stickers and signs intact so everyone else knows they supported all this punishing insanity.
The State won’t raise one extra cent. Neither will the Feds. Too high on the Laffer Curve. Most likely revenues will decrease and the liberals, being morons, will be perplexed.
25 years of construction, and they haven’t finished the I-5 bridge over the Puyallup River.
Just pile all the cash up and light a match.
Even if every single one of these lame brain ideas were enacted, it wouldn't be enough to satisfy the politicos. It never is.
Mileage tax.
All those insurance trackers are going to be how your are taxed.
Eh. They will lose money somewhere else. They are getting all the tax revenue they are going to get right now.
Weirdly it didn’t raise the price to 25 dollars in 2015 when they raised the gas tax 11 cents. Maybe the 9 cents will do it this year.
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