TF replied<\/a>, saying \u201cO\u2019Toole conflates taxes and fees.\u201d In fact, TF specifically said that state gas taxes are user fees, but somehow defined federal gas taxes as \u201cgeneral funds.\u201d I simply argued that, to be consistent, TF should count federal gas taxes as user fees as well.<\/p>\n TF went on to say, \u201cO\u2019Toole suggests we include federal gasoline tax collections in state-local revenue.\u201d Again, TF said that federal gas tax collections are \u201cgeneral funds\u201d and I disagreed with that statement. If state gas tax collections are user fees, then federal gas tax collections are too. They are certainly not general funds, any more than state gas taxes are general funds, since federal law dedicates them to transportation projects and mostly to highways.<\/p>\n TF said, \u201cO\u2019Toole suggests that we include motor vehicle registration taxes and fees, but not the associated expenses\u201d such as highway patrols. In fact, I said nothing about the associated expenses because, for the most part, those expenses are already included in the reported $155 billion cost of highways.<\/p>\n TF said, \u201cO\u2019Toole suggests that we include state and local bond sales for road construction, which would double-count revenue.\u201d But nothing I said would double-counting revenues. What I said was that bond sales for highways are not, in any sense, \u201cgeneral funds\u201d if they will be repaid out of user fees.<\/p>\n TF said, \u201cO\u2019Toole suggests that we include $13 billion in \u201cinvestment income\u201d on state-local gasoline tax and user fee revenue, but that is not a net interest figure.\u201d What TF means is that some of that interest might come from investments of non-user fees, which is true. But since user fees cover the vast majority of state and local road costs, interest on those user fees makes up the vast majority of interest. Yet TF counted all interest as \u201cgeneral funds.\u201d<\/p>\n TF said, \u201cO\u2019Toole suggests that we use Federal Highway Administration data rather than U.S. Census Bureau data. We have no evidence that the U.S. Census Bureau is unreliable in this area.\u201d I suggest that the fact that the Census Bureau, which uses secondary data, differs from the Federal Highway Administration, which uses primary data, is itself evidence that the Census Bureau data are unreliable.<\/p>\n In sum, by TF’s own definition of user fees as being gas taxes and tolls, something like 55 percent of the cost of roads is collected in user fees. Adding vehicle registration fees brings this to 76 percent, and most of the rest is covered by bonds that will be repaid by user fees and interest on those user fees. TF’s reply failed to address my main point, which is that none of these revenues can be considered \u201cgeneral funds.\u201d<\/p>\n Randal O'Toole On Thursday, January 17, the Tax Foundation (TF) issued a paper arguing that only 32 percent of state and local highway costs were paid out of user fees, while the remaining costs came from \u201cgeneral funds.\u201d In a post here, I pointed out that, actually, user fees for highways cover 76 percent of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7314,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-639484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7314"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=639484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639484\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=639484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=639484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=639484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/img><\/a>
<\/img><\/a>
<\/img><\/a>
<\/img><\/a>
<\/img><\/a>
<\/img><\/a>
<\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"