Wednesday, December 14, 2011

New Report: Stagnant State Gas Taxes Costing States $10 Billion Each Year, Undermining Commerce and Forcing Raids on General Funds

New Report: Stagnant State Gas Taxes Costing States $10 Billion Each Year, Undermining Commerce and Forcing Raids on General Funds

To: NATIONAL AND TRANSPORTATION EDITORS

Contact: CONTACT: Anne Singer, +1-202-299-1066 ext.27

Tax, Now during Eighty Year Low, Can Be Shored Up for $2.93 Per Average Driver Per Month

WASHINGTON, Dec. 14, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A initial of a kind, 50-state investigate from a Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) reveals that state governments are losing out on over $10 billion in transport income any year, contributing to an estimated $130 billion empty on a economy ensuing from aloft car correct costs and transport time delays. State lawmakers demure to refurbish gas taxes have cost their states, on average, $201 million in annual revenues. These waste are exacerbated by a disappearing sovereign gas tax, that also supports state transport projects and has mislaid 41 percent of a value given it was final lifted in 1993. "Building a Better Gas Tax: How to Fix One of State Government's Least Sustainable Revenue Sources" papers state-by-state total including a costs and advantages of due remedies. The news is accessible during .

"Unfortunately, many politicians won't cruise touching a gas tax," pronounced Carl Davis, comparison researcher during ITEP and author of a study. "They are lifting sales taxes, fees on vehicles, tolls on roads, even looting preparation funds, all to make adult for a low gas tax. But they can't move themselves to update a biggest source of transport income that's indeed underneath their control. It creates no sense."

Annual revenues particular states mount to replenish by updating their gas tax rates to compare stream transportation construction costs include: Virginia - $578 million; Maryland - $509 million; New Jersey - $505 million; Massachusetts - $451 million; Iowa - $337 million; Oklahoma - $338 million; South Carolina - $407 million; Arizona - $435 million.

"Building a Better Gas Tax" shows that a normal state has not increasing a gas taxation rate in over a decade, and 14 states have left 20 years or longer but an increase. But while state gas taxes sojourn flat, a cost of paving roads and building bridges fundamentally rises, mostly during a rate aloft than ubiquitous inflation. "It's simple math," pronounced Davis. "The highway repairs we could buy in 1990 with 20 cents, for example, are going to cost 34 cents today. But we still see some states collecting a same prosaic 20 cent taxation that they did behind in 1990. That's a clarification of unsustainable."

After adjusting for construction cost growth, a normal state's gasoline taxation rate has effectively depressed by 20 percent, or 6.8 cents per gallon, given a final time it was raised. Diesel taxes have depressed by 18 percent, or 6.0 cents per gallon.

Today's state gas taxes make adult a smaller apportionment of family budgets than during any time given a taxation was initial widely instituted in a 1920s. A 10 cent per gallon increase, as a news explains, would cost today's normal motorist $4.31 per month, and a 6.8 cent per gallon boost indispensable in a normal state would cost a normal motorist $2.93 per month.

Significantly, since these amounts are not immaterial to many consumers, one of a report's 3 recommendations is to hospital a targeted taxation credit to equivalent a jagged effects of a aloft gas taxation on low-income families' budgets.

"Building a Better Gas Tax" offers 3 specific process recommendations for modernizing state gas taxes and indicates that states have implemented which. They are:

  1. Increase gas taxation rates to retreat their prolonged tenure declines; the      suitable rate varies by state.   2. Peg gas taxation to grow alongside a cost of transportation      construction projects.   3. Create or raise targeted taxation credits for low-income families to      equivalent a impact of gas taxation reform. 

"Building a Better Gas Tax" with 50-state information in a appendix is accessible at: .

Founded in 1980, a Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) is a non-profit, non-partisan investigate organization, formed in Washington, DC, that focuses on sovereign and state taxation policy. ITEP's goal is to surprise policymakers and a open of a effects of stream and due taxation policies on taxation fairness, supervision budgets, and sound mercantile policy. ITEP's full physique of investigate is accessible during .

SOURCE Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy

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News referensi http://news.yahoo.com/report-stagnant-state-gas-taxes-costing-states-10-133111933.html

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