By G.R. Whale
When you did your taxes (we presume you've finished them or are getting close), did you happen to notice how many taxes related to your truck? These go beyond the usual license/registration, weight fee, and sales tax on parts and service. We really contribute, don't we?
There are even more vehicle-related taxes out there that you should be aware of. Consider road taxes. The Interstate highway system was intended to be free, but there's a growing trend to add tolls to bridges, tunnels, and highways (public and private). I know people with $3000 annual tabs. You could argue private toll roads are good because they get traffic off of public roads. However, these toll roads frequently destroy public recreation lands and do little to mitigate emissions.
If a bridge (Minnesota) or tunnel (Boston) collapses, do you get your money back? We get a refund on other defective products; why not include these on our tax refunds? The Romans built bridges still standing after two millennia because corrupt or inept politicians and builders in the Roman Empire went to the lions. And engineers had more power.
The roads would be better if fuel taxes were used for roads only, more efficiently. On average you pay about 50 per gallon of gasoline. The feds get 18.4 of that, while the states' cuts and their methods vary. Most states receive a percentage of sales price for maximum revenue, while some like Louisiana charge a flat rate by quantity of gasoline.
State gas taxes range from 7.5 per gallon in Georgia to Pennsylvania's highest diesel tax at 35.1 per gallon; for gasoline, Connecticut, New York, and California are near the top. Most recent data shows California gets an 18-per-gallon excise tax, six-percent sales tax, 1.25-percent county tax, plus a UST fee I can't even define-totaling 60-65 per gallon. Frankly, California roads and mass transit aren't worth it.
Australia and the U.K. tax gasoline and diesel equally, but the U.K. taxes less for biofuels. Germans pay about the same tax on a liter of diesel as Americans do for a gallon, and more for gasoline. If you've driven there, you might agree their roads and mass transit network are quite good, and there are no tolls on the national highways.
While you were paying thousands in fuel tax last year, ExxonMobil was quietly making record profits that equate to about $130 for every person in the U.S. ($39.5 billion). According to an American Petroleum Institute spokesman, oil companies invested $86 billion last year and have to "treat investors appropriately or we'd have the Eliot Spitzers of the world coming after us." Note there's no mention of drivers, only shareholders. The associate director of the energy program at Rice University-in the same hometown as Shell, Marathon, and Halliburton over the years-says, "If it's Google, no one asks about the profits because they're too busy buying the stock." (Google reported profits of $4.2 billion for 2007, less than 11 percent of ExxonMobil's.) He adds, "Exxon is different. We have emotional feelings related to gasoline because there's no readily available substitute."
Where is that $86 billion invested? Some of it goes to drilling in public lands and open space in the West-where you 'wheel, camp, hike, and ride-and frequently have to pay a tax to visit.
Since 1996, the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, and Fish & Wildlife Service have been collecting fees, now at more than 400 sites. The Department of the Interior takes in close to $165 million in fees a year, much of it through the recreation access tax (RAT; look up U.S. Code, Title 16, Chapter 87, 6802, Recreation Fee Authority).
But by law there are limits to fees the Secretary of the Interior is allowed to charge. He can't charge for specific parking, undesignated parking, or picnicking along roads or trailsides; general access, dispersed areas with low or no investment; persons driving, walking, boating, hiking, or horseback riding through without using facilities or services; camping at undeveloped sites lacking minimal facilities or services; or use of overlooks or scenic pullouts. To get around this, the Forest Service developed High Impact areas to make more fee money, although nothing in the RAT authorized the Forest Service to make up a new fee structure.
And while the National Park Service typically gets more money per acre than the BLM, it farms out many functions to private companies. States and cities are already following suit, so soon you'll be able to buy your taxed gasoline, green-sticker tax, public land-user tax, city bed/tent tax, and High Impact tax all at the same service station.
To find the best place to voice your opinion on this and join those who also are fed up, type "tax" into your favorite Web search engine and the parameters most important to you-fuel, road, wilderness, phone, etc. Perhaps we can bring some accountability to government taxing truck and SUV owners and users.