The Republican leadership in the North Carolina General Assembly wants to cap our state’s gasoline tax. How is this anything but a stupid idea? Sure, it’d be nice for folks not to pay anything, anytime, but that’s not how it works. If you build roads, you damn sure better be willing to maintain them.
The gasoline tax pays for roads: roads that are in dire need of repair. We either pay to fix them or we pay when commerce in our state grinds to a halt.
Another ill-advised bill making its way through the NCGA would bar I-95 from becoming a toll road. One legislator said that companies would move their operations elsewhere if the tolls went into effect. If you think tolls will drive business away, imagine what will happen if I-95 becomes a pothole-filled parking lot because it’s crumbling and outdated.
There’s no complicated problem without a solution that’s simple, logical – and wrong. H.L. Mencken said something much like that years ago, and life still has a way of proving the caustic journalist right. Take the gasoline tax.
North Carolina’s state tax on gasoline sold at the pump, currently 38.9 cents, is relatively steep. It ranks sixth highest in the land (an additional federal tax of 18.4 cents on each gallon applies throughout the country). Our state’s tax is also an unusual one, in that a portion of it adjusts every six months in tune with the wholesale price of gasoline. So: Higher-priced gas equals a higher state gas tax.
To motorists with wallets pumped dry, that doesn’t seem fair, or right. No wonder politicians eagerly offer solutions
via Running low on road revenue – Editorials – NewsObserver.com.
Sales tax goes up when the price of something goes up. Why shouldn’t the tax on gas be the same?
@Tanner – the sales tax percentage does not increase just because you buy a car instead of a candy bar, though
@Warren, really?!? I thought you were smarter than that. Nowhere did I say the percentage went up. No one is saying the percentage goes up for the gas tax. But, the gas tax is done in absolute numbers, not percentages so it has to be adjusted in absolute numbers.
Personally, I would prefer that it was simply done as a percentage just like sales tax.
@Tanner – apparently I missed some coffee this evening. I read that as “38.4 percent” and not “cents”. A percentage rate would make far more sense than the current model in some regards, but in many others it does not.
If $100 million is needed for road maintenance, and the tax on gasoline is 10%, then $1 billion in gasoline must be sold. That is not a proportional-to-miles-driven amount, whereas a fixed cost per gallon is. If, instead, the gas tax is $0.10, then 1 billion gallons must be sold – a very different (and more reasonable in this context, in my opinion) model.