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Kaine promotes additional sales tax on auto sales Date published: 1/15/2008
RICHMOND--Gov. Tim Kaine said yesterday he would advocate for an increase in the sales tax on vehicles to make up money lost if lawmakers repeal the abusive driver fees.
Speaking to reporters, Kaine said he thinks charging a 5 percent sales tax on vehicle sales, rather than the current 3 percent, is the best way to provide more money for road maintenance. "If we're serious about transportation funding, why have a lower sales tax on automobiles?" he said. "That just remains a very rational place to go for maintenance dollars." However, House Speaker Bill Howell, R-Stafford, disagrees. "The car industry is in one of the deepest recessions," Howell said. He called this "the absolute worst time [to increase the sales tax on cars] because that's a significant tax." Kaine's comments come as lawmakers start considering repealing the "abuser fees"--a fee levied on those who get reckless driving tickets, DUIs and other traffic tickets. The fees were part of last year's transportation package, and were expected to raise about $65 million for roads. But public outcry against them has been enormous, in part because they apply only to Virginia drivers, and because they were being applied to traffic offenses much less egregious than what lawmakers had in mind. Legislators began backpedaling last fall, and now that the session has begun there are a slew of bills to repeal the fees. Kaine, who had earlier advocated revising the fees, surprised many last week when he, too, advocated outright repeal of them. Repealing the fees--while perhaps keeping them for DUI or serious, repeat reckless driving--seems to not be a very contentious topic. What is contentious, however, is how--or whether--to provide money to make up for any lost revenue from the fees. Kaine said raising the sales tax on cars--which is technically removing an exemption--would generate about $220 million per 1 percent of tax. He'd like that money to go to road maintenance, which keeps costing more money than is budgeted to pay for it. However, he isn't proposing actual legislation to do so; Kaine made such a proposal for the past two years, and it never got out of committee in the House of Delegates. Some Democrats have proposed a different tax to pay for maintenance and road improvements--an increase in the gas tax.
The only way to fix our transportation burden is to tax in a way that gives an incentive to all auto and truck owners to reduce the burden on our transportation systems. The only easy way to do this is to increase the gas tax. A sales tax increase has no relation to the impact of miles driven - the number one cause of maintenance expenses. If we truely want to fix the problem, let the tax relate to the states expeness.
You're forgiven. Mark Warner is totally forgetable except as an example of a tax-and-spend liberal in "businessman's" clothing.
Can't some of that money go to the roads? Why raise the gas tax when gas is a rip off as it is? Why not call Florida or one of the states with no income tax and see how they do it, since Kaine is clueless!
TOTALLY FORGOT ABOUT MARK WARNER.
John Warner is a Republican not a democrat. so i guess both sides have a penchant for increasing taxes or at least trying to.
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