Op Ed Piece Suggests Taxing Crude Oil To Pay For Transportation
Here's one I haven't heard before: an opinion piece in the Detroit Free Press suggests levying a percentage tax on crude oil in order to fund hundreds of billions of dollars of transportation improvements and shore up the depleted Highway Trust Fund.
Gas taxes currently support the Trust Fund, but are dwindling because new technology has improved gas mileage, translating to less taxes paid for gas. The tax is bringing in less that what the government is paying out for transportation, so the Free Press writer says
collect the tax at refineries and adjust the rate quarterly to account for changes in the price of oil.What are your thoughts on this?
About SRTC
SRTC is the federally designated Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) for Spokane County. Urbanized areas with populations exceeding 50,000 people are required to have an MPO. SRTC was formed to address the county's transportation planning needs. It provides coordination in planning between the public, cities, small towns, the county, the state, transit providers, and tribes.
SRTC offers services including transportation monitoring, transportation modeling, census information analysis, travel demand forecasting, historical traffic count analysis, geographic information systems, and trip generation rates.
3 comments:
I assume they will not tax home heating oil?, but I think taxing fuel is a better way to pay for transportation improvements and maintaining the roads and bridges we have now. That will still continue to drop as people buy more fuel efficient cars and use less gas to drive the same number of miles.
I hadn't even thought of home heating oil Charles. The article didn't mention it but I would also assume it wouldn't be taxed. But then again, everything I found online says that burning oil in your home releases SOME particulates into the air, which is what Vehicle Miles Travelled regulations are working to address; air pollution and climate change.
The Spokane Regional Clean Air Agency doesn't have anything on their site about heating your home with oil so I emailed Ron Edgar, Chief of Technical Services there, to see if he has any insight. He's also on our Transportation Technical Committee.
Just heard back from Ron Edgar at the Spokane Clean Air Agency and just for fun we did a little figuring. Ron says that home heating oil puts out five pounds of carbon dioxide per 1000 gallons. Your average sedan that gets 20 miles per gallon gas mileage puts out about 730 pounds of CO per 1000 gallons. Wow, big difference.
Ron also says that by the time he pays sales tax on his home heating oil, it runs over $4 per gallon.
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