Bob Gibson, political reporter for Charlottesville’s Daily Progress, opines on the prospects for transportation taxes in the 2007 session of the General Assembly. Traditional wisdom, he writes, says that it’s hard to get new taxes passed in the 46 days allotted to short sessions of the legislature, especially when all seats in the House and the Senate are up for re-election later in the year.
This year, Gibson contends, the pressure to do something about transportation is so intense that the Assembly may well pass a tax without calling it a tax. One possibility is to let congestion-prone regions like Northern Virginia or Hampton Roads impose a regional levy upon themselves — it may be a tax, but it’s not a “general” tax. Another is to pass a mini-tax on the grounds that, “If it’s hidden, or it’s small, a tax is a tax but may not be much of a tax at all.”
A third trick, suggests Gibson, “is to call a tax a toll.”
I take from the tone of Gibson’s column that his intent is to be light and clever, which entails adopting a voice of tongue-in-cheek cynicism. Fair enough. Trouble is, if enough people adopt that voice, they may kill off one of Virginia’s best hopes to deal rationally with traffic congestion.
A toll is NOT a tax. It is a user fee — and that’s not just semantics. A tax collects revenues from people generally and then redistributes it to someone else. Even narrow-bore taxes like the Kaine administration’s proposed auto titling tax would tax citizens generally (all those who purchase cars, regardless of how much, or where, or when they drive) and redistribute it for the benefit of those who drive the most (pushing up maintenance costs) or who drive on congested routes (increasing the demand for new roads).
With tolls, the people who pay for a road are the ones who use it, when they use it — unless, of course, they are Dulles Toll Road commuters, who are being levied to pay for the Rail to Dulles heavy rail project… in which case the toll really is a tax.
A toll is a “toll,” and not a “tax,” when it is either (a) used to pay off the cost of building an entirely new transportation asset, or (b) is used to ration scarce roadway capacity in order to reduce traffic congestion to levels consistent with optimal throughput. In either case, the toll payer is receiving a direct benefit — access to a roadway — in exchange for his money.
As public opinions consistently show, citizens understand the difference. They express greater willingness to accept tolls than transportation taxes because they know that there is a direct exchange of value when they pay tolls, while there is no guarantee of value when they pay taxes. Citizens understand that gasoline taxes often fund projects that benefit no one but developers, land speculators and the politicians in their pockets.
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