The revenue will pretty much come from the same people (us), but to the extent our share of the burden shifts, it would shift from people that don't drive much, and towards the people that drive too much. And it would shift the burden off our stores and on to oil companies, and also spare businesses the horror of having to reprogram their cash registers, and customers of having to re-learn the tax table we've known for our whole lives. That would suck for everyone.
So is the point to punish everyone? To make us all aware of the tax increase, and the state's power over us? Or maybe, to make lucrative work for cash-register programmers? If the point is to raise the missing revenue during this recession, a gas tax makes much more sense. Everyone is already used to fluctuating gas prices, and we generally have no idea what portion is tax, so we won't have to compute anything different, we'll just note that gas prices shot up today because of higher taxes. Fair enough. And the stations won't even have to reprogram their pumps, they'll simply pay a different percentage come tax time, easy.
Plus, long term, we are definitely going to be raising gas taxes. We all know (the public, not just BMGers) that it has to be done to save the earth's remaining oil, so it isn't squandered on trips to the Foxy Lady or wherever we go that we know we shouldn't. We are ready for a gas tax increase. But a sales tax increase? Really? Is that really going to happen??
but there’s a few problems:
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p>1. The revenue from a gas tax can’t come anywhere near the revenue from sales tax. This makes sense: we buy a lot more of not gas than we do petroleum. Each penny of gas tax is worth about $21M in revenue. Each percent of sales tax is worth about $500M in revenue.
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p>2. Gas tax revenue must be used for transportation. Article LXXVIII lays that smack down. Specifically:
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p>and then superseded by Article CIV:
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p>So, you can raise gas tax to wipe out the Turnpike debt, the MBTA debt, to eliminate MBTA fares, to increase state aid so towns don’t have to spend so much. But, you can’t use gas tax to go to general expenditures — it’s not just a bad idea, it’s not just against the law… it’s unconstitutional.
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p>Even if you could, there’s not enough revenue there to make much of a dent. Raising the gas tax 25 cents with no additional money for transit would be needed, and frankly that money is needed for transportation as it is.
but, isn’t the point of the legislation filed by the Governor to help recover our financially stressed transportation system? Targeting the money for that purpose is best done through a means that constitutionally guarantees it finds its was to its intended purpose.
I don’t get your thinking here. Bad idea? How is it a bad idea?
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p>Not enough revenue? Just raise it whatever it takes to raise the needed revenue, which sounds like you are saying it would be 25 cents. That’s do-able, pretty much what I was expecting, and what the public is prepared for.
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p>Unconstitutional? Why is that in the Constitution in the first place? Why not just strike that out? And even if we work within the law, isn’t there enough wiggle room that we could redivert money around the budget?
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p>Are you actually in favor of raising the sales tax? Do you think it is not high enough? Not a “world class” sales tax?
Well, obviously it’s not quite that simple. You’d have to amend the Constitution, which as we know takes two legislative votes and a ballot question over 3-4 years.
Are you saying that’s how this got in there in the first place? When did the public vote on Article Whatever? Or is this John Quincy Adams’ wisdom? Or are there other ways for the Legislature to amend the constitution?
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p>Surely that can’t be the talking-point excuse that we have to raise the sales tax? ‘Cause we can get the revenue from a 25 cent a gallon gas tax hike right now, it’ll cost everyone 10% more to fill their tanks, and spend that money easily, without worrying about the Constitution. Either follow it and just fudge the budget, or screw that nit-picking and wait for a court challenge from someone, and start the process of changing it. Why keep it?
– people will have a big enough incentive to go to NH/VT/RI/CT/NY if you raise it that far, since we’ll have the highest prices in the country
– people will start to use less gas. That’s a public good to be sure, but it also means revenues will erode quickly.
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p>So look, I’d love to see gas tax go up 20 cents (not 25), but I don’t want that money to go to the general revenue. I want it to go to
– fix the MBTA debt
– fix the MBTA operational deficit (caused by debt)
– expand the MBTA green line, blue line, silver line
– improve bus routes with priority signalization
– stretch commuter rail all the way to Springfield and to Cape Cod
– fix the Mass Pike debt
– remove the tolls on the Pike
– add more HOV lanes, which requires real money to deal with exits, exchanges, and the like
– improve Amtrak rail so we’ve got faster service to Providence (and hence NYC) as well as to Springfield and Albany (and hence Montreal, etc)
– improve freight rail so that we can get more trucks off of the road as well as stimulate more jobs for the Boston ports
– rail to trails where applicable
– spend real money to put in bike lanes that connect to each other, even if it means moving curbs, changing intersection geometries, or adding traffic signals
– spend real money to add, improve, and widen sidewalks and install curb cuts
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p>We do that, and there’s no money left for the general fund. Heck, there’s not even enough money to do all that I just listed. So no, I don’t want transportation tax money to go to the general fund. I want it spent on improving transportation.
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p>I’m not in favor of raising the sales tax. I’m in favor or raising the income tax (and the personal exemption). I’m in favor of local options tax (including a 3 cent local options gas tax: 1/1/1/ for state road/local road/public trans), removing the sales tax exemption on booze, sweet beverages, and bottled water, and of expanding the bottle deposit laws to cover more and to make ’em 10 cents, of eliminating the corporate tax reduction.
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p>But, the income tax increase ain’t happening, and the other stuff isn’t enough. If we raise the gas tax and use it for general funding, we’ll lose any hope of funding the MBTA (or other public trans) in the Commonwealth adequately for another generation.
You say “I’m not in favor of raising the sales tax”, but you are certainly helping shove it through by holding back the gas tax for your pet projects. And you are then going to call for a gas tax and income tax increases, so we’ll end up with all three!
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p>And if we have all three, then your first objection to raising the gas tax applies to your proposal even more than raising the gas tax alone: there will be even more people going to New Hampshire if both the gas tax AND the income tax are incentives. The shock of seeing the sales tax rise is going to be a constant and loud voice telling people to drive to New Hampshire and save six bucks on every hundred they don’t spend here, and if they fill up while they are up there, they’ll save enough on gas to make up for the longer drive.
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p>The way to solve your first objection is with a buffer zone for stations near the border, and perhaps we could even work something out with New Hampshire, where they raise some local gas taxes near the border. Or, why aren’t we asking for a hike in Federal gas taxes, with the money collected by each state? There shouldn’t be any states that allow less-than-true-cost of gasoline, or energy in general.
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p>Your second objection also applies more to your solution than it does to mine: People will use less gas under your solution too (once you get the gas tax passed to fund the transportation improvements), so the economy will contract just the same (or more, since there will be a higher sales tax also, prompting more internet purchases), and then you won’t see the gains from the higher sales tax or the higher income tax.
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p>And maybe now isn’t the time to fix the MBTA and Pike debt. Maybe those should be renegotiated and put off a little longer (after all, you are willing to wait until the gas tax gets raised, which would have to wait for the sales tax to settle in for a while politically). Or, maybe if we are paying to much interest on the debt every day, something from the general fund needs to be cut in order to retire those debts right away.
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p>The other items you list, I only agree with improving rail service, or at least not letting it rot any further. Improving rail service is going to be a long term project, and there will be plenty of demand for it in time. But even in the future, with great trains, people shouldn’t be commuting from the Cape or Springfield, whether by car or train, or even traveling much to Providence or New York. And locally, we don’t need to spend any money on bike lanes or sidewalks or re-working intersections or new fangled technology for buses. Just raising the gas tax will increase ridership and biking and walking.
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p>I agree with extending sales tax to bottled beverages.
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p>I don’t think that earmarking revenue is a good idea, it only leads to more work to make budgets and source everything, which costs money and limits options. State revenues are state revenues, stop with the politics and games. No discrimination in the constitution! If there are any other silly Articles like that, we should get rid of them the same way they came in.
My pet projects include improvements for the blue line, the green line, the silver line, buses, commuter rail both west and southeast, the Mass Turnpike, carpooling on all highways, Amtrak both north/south along the central and eastern parts as well as east/west, bicycle improvements in urban, suburban, and rural areas, and sidewalk improvements for both abled and disabled.
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p>If those are pet projects, then I’m running the biggest pet store this side of the Rio Grande.
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p>This may come as a shock to you, but I don’t have a direct line to the governor’s office, the senate president’s office, nor the speaker’s office. I have no direct influence whatsoever. This idea that I’m calling for tax increases “so we’ll end up with all three” is flat out dopey. We won’t end up with a gas tax, even though I want one. We won’t end up with an income tax increase, even though I want one. We will end up with a sales tax increase, even though I don’t want one.
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p>We’ve got a huge revenue shortage for non-transit, and a huge revenue shortage for transit. My point is that
(a) there’s not enough gas tax increasability to cover both
(b) they’re both important
(c) if you use gas tax to cover non-transit, you need a constitutional amendment
(d) even id you do (c), by transferring transit revenue outside of transit you ensure that the transit projects will go on unfunded, which I think is a huge mistake.
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p>Look, the fact is that it’s moot. There’s no general appetite for your (currently
illegalunconstitutional proposal). Don’t get pissy with me for pointing it out.<
p>In fact, going back and rereading your post, it’s clear that you don’t give a crap about transportation issues at all, and don’t particularly understand the role of transportation in people’s lives or the economy. Therefore, it makes perfect sense that you’d like to use transportation funding to avoid the sales tax while letting transportation rot. That’s the real crux of the issue. I think we ought to dump oodles of money into every method of reducing auto usage and carbon emissions, for both short, medium, and long distance travel. You don’t — you want that revenue to cover educating and housing and policing and medicating and all those other gov’t activities. I think those other issues are important too, but don’t want to sacrifice the long term vision of mass transit to provide those things; I want us to pay for both.
Look, the fact is that it’s moot. There’s no general appetite for your (currently illegal unconstitutional proposal). Don’t get pissy with me for pointing it out.
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p>Why do you think that? I think there is strong general appetite for raising the gas tax. Everyone knows what Al Gore and James Kunstler and Michael Pollan and Michael Moore have been saying about local sustainability and the oil crisis, we’ve been hearing it for 30 years that we have to do something. We know it is coming. I didn’t see any doomsday movies about sales taxes running out. There are very few people calling for a Fair Tax or higher sales taxes, but there are many more people freaking out about how we are screwing up the future by burning oil too much and we need to raise the gas tax.
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p>In fact, going back and rereading your post, it’s clear that you don’t give a crap about transportation issues at all, and don’t particularly understand the role of transportation in people’s lives or the economy.
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p>The role should be taxed the hell out of, so that transportation becomes a smaller and smaller part of people’s lives, and the economy contracts and becomes more local and sustainable. That’ll happen with or without a tax, just by running out of oil, which is why its important to tax it in advance to start the adjustment. It is the only way to reflect the real future value of oil right now, because the market doesn’t take into account the cost of Florida being underwater in 10 years. Yes, it’ll be painful to lots of people who drive a lot, but they’ll have to figure that out sooner or later anyhow.
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p>Therefore, it makes perfect sense that you’d like to use transportation funding to avoid the sales tax while letting transportation rot.
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p>Hey now, I specifically said it shouldn’t be allowed to rot or get worse, we will need it very soon. I just think most of those projects are unnecessary and/or ill-advised, and the ones that aren’t can wait a few years. We need to reduce travel, even on commuter train lines, and having bad ones is a good way to do that, provided the alternative (driving and flying) is taxed high enough to leave people no real option but work closer to home, or live closer to work.
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p>I actually like sales taxes, but not raising ours, especially unilaterally. I think no one is realizing the aggregate cost of raising the state sales tax, the hassle and side-effects. Maybe it’ll be trivial for Target and BestBuy, but there are lots of stores running 10 year old Excel 2.0 spreadsheets, and no one that still does Excel programming, lots of clerks that will have to get out calculators because the register is twenty years old and no one can find the manual. And with the long lines that form, all their customers will drive to New Hampshire on ridiculously under-priced gas, joining the BestBuy customers looking to save $62.50 on their $1000 laptop. How much gas would be saved if we eliminated state sales tax? No doubt quote a bit. But I don’t advocate that, because I do think that people should pay more of the true costs of consumerism, and buy less stuff. Plus, stores would have to reprogram their registers for that too. I advocate (Congresspeople, please note) a federal internet sales tax, with the revenue going to the purchaser’s state. And I think raising state sales taxes will make it harder to get an internet sales tax.
The constitutional problem is the use of gas tax revenues for anything other than transportation. The revenue needed to adequately fund the transportation infrastructure is a major part of the current budget crisis.
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p>A $0.25/gallon increase in the gas tax (combined with the removal of ALL tolls), directed to unloading (a) the Big Dig debt burden of the MBTA and (b) the forward-funding requirements of the MBTA, would surely relieve at least some of the revenue pressure on other segments of the budget.
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p>Isn’t that good enough?
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p>I think the Governor’s proposed gas tax increase is the right answer. The challenge has been how to effectively get that through lege.
Use gas tax money to fix transportation. That extra 20-25 cents per gallon could be well spent there, before using it to pay for other government activity.
I sixed your comment because I interpreted it as saying that there is more than enough transportation-related spending in our budget for the 25 cent gas tax to go to, so we don’t need to worry about any Constitutional issues, let’s go for the gas tax right now, what are we talking sales tax for?
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p>I was surprised that stomv agreed with your comment also, though, since he disagreed with my post.
that you were suggesting that gas tax revenue be directed to the general fund. His objection was to that aspect, rather than increasing the gas tax itself.
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p>I think he explained that in the next-to-last paragraph of his original comment, but you may have misunderstood him.
Wasn’t your post saying that it was a moot point? That there is enough Transportation funding coming from the general fund that we can use gas tax revenue instead, and save the general fund for other things?
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p>And his last paragraph is over-dramatic. Why would we not prioritize all our needs in a smart fashion? The MBTA can be funded out of the general fund. Earmarking revenue is just a hassle, it’s make-work for hacks. Why should the budget for the MBTA depend on gas tax revenues?
The law is the law. Amending the existing constitutional restrictions on the gas tax does not sound, to me, like the most direct route towards correcting the current budget crisis, especially since transportation is the largest single underfunded area of state spending.
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p>If you think transportation shouldn’t be the top priority, feel free to make your case — but that has nothing to do with the gas tax.
How much do we need for transportation (minimally, and fully funded), how much do we get from the gas tax (currently and if we raise it 25 cents)?
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p>If we spend more on transportation than we’ll get from gas tax, then the constitutional issue is moot. I thought that’s what you were saying was the case. I don’t have those figures.
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p>Only if we take in more than we’ll spend on transportation will we be in conflict with that Article, in which case, what happens? Maybe we can amortize or depreciate surplus gas tax revenues in some sort of long-term fund, so we can pay it back by spending on transportation in the future when there is no more gas revenue.
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p>And some transportation projects are surely higher than others, as with non-transportation needs, so why can’t we let the legislature decide? Why hamstring them with earmarks about how to spend state revenues?
So my T pass doesn’t go up for the umpteenth time in the past decade. The T will soon be another method of transportation inaccessible to low-income people if they follow through with the proposed price hike and service cuts.
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p>With the state’s environmental agenda, it seems to make sense to support public transportation to encourage mass usage and to expand service, not cut it.
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p>Support fixing the public transportation infrastructure through gas tax makes total sense to me.