Gasoline tax myths

In Saturday's Post, Stephen Ginsberg writes in "Acute Pain at the Pump Stalls Gas Tax Revenue," that "Highway projects are paid for primarily through a tax on every gallon of gas pumped. So as high prices compel some people to leave their SUVs and other vehicles in their garages and look for ways to cut back on the gas they use, less tax money is collected."

While it's true that a decrease in sales of gasoline reduces gasoline tax revenues, it is somewhat incorrect to state that highway projects are paid for primarily through gasoline taxes.

According to Neal Peirce, in a May 2003 column entitled "GAS TAX HIKES: NEEDED BUT POLITICALLY PERILOUS ,":

"University of California-Berkeley Professor Martin Wachs warns in a ground-breaking analysis of our highway funding dilemmas published by the Brookings Institution, "Improving Efficiency and Equity in Transportation Finance".Gas taxes are critical right now, reports Wachs, but in fact they're covering only 35 percent of our governments' cumulative spending on roadways, from big expressways to meandering country roads.

What? Weren't we always told highways are sort of self-financing through the gas tax? Not true, says Wachs. Even when you add in vehicle taxes (another 20 percent of road funding) and tolls (4 percent), it turns out auto- and truck-user-related revenues are larger, but only slightly, than the billions flowing in from local property taxes, bond issues and governments' general fund appropriations.

So much for the tired argument public transit depends on "subsidies," and roads don't!"