Industry ready to fight trucks-only tax
As lawmakers begin to drum up ways to raise revenue to pay for an expected massive infrastructure package, trucking groups are working yet again to bat down the idea of charging them fees per vehicle miles traveled.
“Hell no,” read the subject line of an email from one trucking group.
That group, the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, sent a letter Tuesday to the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee warning they’d fight any proposal to impose a truck-only, vehicle miles traveled tax, saying such proposals are “controversial and discriminatory.”
“The inclusion of such a divisive policy in the next surface transportation reauthorization would instantly eliminate our support for the bill and likely destroy any hope for its passage,” wrote Todd Spencer, president and CEO of the organization, arguing such a move would be “a terrible way to demonstrate your support and appreciation” of truckers who kept the supply chain operating during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Separately, Bill Sullivan, executive vice president of advocacy for the American Truckers Association, said trucking provides half the receipts from federal fuel taxes to the Highway Trust Fund, despite representing only four percent of vehicles on the road and driving nine percent of the miles traveled.
[Increasingly irrelevant gas tax awaits a better idea]
“Our industry has long said we are willing to pay our fair share to finance needed improvements to our infrastructure, and we support increasing user fees,” Sullivan said. “However, as we made clear when this type of tax was floated and scuttled last year, we are unwilling to be singled out with discriminatory truck-only fees to pay for our nation’s infrastructure needs and will strongly oppose any effort to do so.” ‘Serious consideration’
The trucking industry’s opposition comes even after the ranking Republican on the Finance panel admitted that “there are a lot of senators who I think are giving (the idea of a truck VMT) serious consideration.”
“I’m not in favor of it,” said Sen. Michael D. Crapo, R-Idaho, who added ”I’m evaluating everything, but that’s not one of my preferred options.”
Finance Chairman Ron Wyden, DOre., said, “I won’t get into specifics, but the debate is underway.”
Lawmakers are exploring a variety of revenue-raising options in large part because of a reluctance to raise the federal gas tax, which through the Highway Trust Fund has paid for the highways since 1956 and transit since 1982. The tax hasn’t been increased since 1993, so it has not kept up with inflation. And with vehicles becoming increasingly fuel-efficient and automakers such as General Motors saying they’ll phase out gas-powered combustion engines altogether within the next 20 years, it faces looming irrelevance.