how to calculate virginia highway use fee

or greater go from $45.75 to $35.75, Pickup and panel trucks 4,000 lbs. A tax creditis a provision that reduces a taxpayers final tax bill, dollar-for-dollar. endstream endobj 868 0 obj <>/Metadata 26 0 R/Pages 25 0 R/StructTreeRoot 28 0 R/Type/Catalog/ViewerPreferences<>>> endobj 869 0 obj <>/ExtGState<>/Font<>/ProcSet[/PDF/Text/ImageC/ImageI]/XObject<>>>/Rotate 0/StructParents 0/TrimBox[0.0 0.0 612.0 792.0]/Type/Page/PieceInfo>/PageTransformationMatrixList<0[1.0 0.0 0.0 1.0 0.0 -396.0]>>/PageUIDList<0 1329>>/PageWidthList<0 612.0>>>>>>>> endobj 870 0 obj [/Indexed/DeviceRGB 255 892 0 R] endobj 871 0 obj <> endobj 872 0 obj <> endobj 873 0 obj <>stream The next section makes a case for why motor fuel taxes require an update by analyzing the development of motor fuel tax revenue expressed in cents per mile traveled. They do not estimate the appropriate differentiation between heavy and light vehicles. Heres a breakdown of the new registration fees that will go into effect on July 1: Motorhome registration fees stay the same. The Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) recently broke ground on the I-95 Southbound Auxiliary Lane project, intended to help ease a notorious He travels between Montgomery and Roanoke counties for work. Calculate speeding fine. This could potentially be accomplished by using standard traffic data to approximate the amount owed by commuter states to destination states. The fee schedule for the mileage-based user fee program shall be calculated by dividing the amount of the highway use fee as determined pursuant to subsection B of Maximum Fine for Speeding Tickets in Virginia [20] This example only accounts for passenger cars traveling on public roads and highways. Copyright 2023 WSLS.com is managed by Graham Digital and published by Graham Media Group, a division of Graham Holdings. The federal motor fuel excise tax has been levied since 1932. [23] Ulrik Boesen, Gas Tax Revenue to Decline as Traffic Drops 38 Percent, Tax Foundation, Mar. There has sometimes been resistance to taxes on EVs on the grounds that they are environmentally preferable to traditional gas-powered vehicles and thus create fewer externalities. [5] The average state excise tax rate in 2020 is 25.6 cents, but gasoline is taxed at an average rate of 36.4 cents per gallon when other taxes are included. Given that highway spending has not declined in line with revenues, motor fuel tax revenues are no longer matching expenditures. The highway use fee is effective July 1, 2020, and will be updated on a yearly basis. 19, 2020, https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2020-03/51300-2020-03-highwaytrustfund.pdf. [32], One possible solution to this issue may be to mimic the way taxpayers currently pay gas taxes: at the pump. 0000004173 00000 n The development of total state and federal motor fuel tax burden per VMT can also be illustrated by calculating average tax paid (in 2018 dollars) per VMT by passenger cars (not including trucks and SUVs). The changes, which include tying the gas tax rate to the Consumer Price Index to keep up with inflation starting next year, will help Virginia diversify its funding sources to offset stagnant or declining gas tax revenue, state legislators say. Discrepancies between tax revenues and highway expenditures will get worse as fuel economy improves, if tax rates are not indexed to inflation, or if share of electric vehicles (EVs) grows. In Oregon, which is running a pilot project called OReGO, a voluntary GPS system determines only whether a registered vehicle is driving on a public road in Oregon. Handing over data about your vehicles location at all times is understandably unpopular, especially when that information is supplied to a government entity which may have less reason to resist a subpoena than, for instance, a private company like a cell phone provider. A constant VMT is used to illustrate the difference in tax revenue collected per VMT. [10] This development has been going on for decades, which has resulted in cents raised by motor fuel taxes per VMT declining over time, and it will continue to do so. An externality, in economics terms, is a side effect or consequence of an activity that is not reflected in the cost of that activity, and not primarily borne by those directly involved in said activity. The following vehicles are exempt from the HUF: See Code of Virginias Highway Use Fee page for a full explanation. [30] OReGO, Get started FAQ, accessed July 21, 2020, https://www.myorego.org/get-started/#faq. Maybe there is another solution for the federal government: federal lawmakers could cut back on highway spending and supplement transportation spending by encouraging private sector investment through public-private partnerships (P3). 2020. https://taxfoundation.org/cigarette-tax-revenue-tool/. States have an added complication regarding out-of-state drivers if no federal system exists. In order to truly live up to the benefit principle and user fee ideal, the taxes collected on transportation would be sufficient to cover transportation expenditures. According to the benefit principle, the people using the highway system should also pay for maintaining the highway system. Utah also has a program where electric and hybrid vehicle users can pay fees based on their road usage instead of a flat alternative fuel vehicle fee instituted in 2018. Given the financial situation many states find themselves in due to the coronavirus pandemic, it may be necessary for states to involve private investment to fund crucial projects. If the vehicle is registered for a period other than one year, the highway use fee will be multiplied by the number of years or fraction thereof that the vehicle will be registered. Returned check fee (as required by the Code of Virginia) $85 if the check is $350 or less; $50 + 10% of the check amount if check is greater than $350 [38], Privacy concerns have merit and must be considered, even if the data was handled by a third-party company. WebSection 46.2-772 of the Code of Virginia authorizes DMV to calculate the annual highway use fee using the average number of miles traveled by a passenger vehicle in the ), Making sure that EVs are taxed appropriately for road usage would also make transportation taxes more equitable as access to expensive electric vehicles will no longer affect tax burdens. Absent these adjustments, income taxes are subject to bracket creep and stealth increases on taxpayers, while excise taxes are vulnerable to erosion as taxes expressed in marginal dollars, rather than rates, slowly lose value. [18] In 2018, a passenger car averaged 24.4 MPG, and drivers paid 2.1 cents in taxes per VMT. Copyright 2023 by WSLS 10 - All rights reserved. To use standard view, enable JavaScript by changing your browser options, then try again. Significant concerns regarding privacy must be addressed against a desire for a targeted, equitable, and efficient tax. Copyright 2020 WHSV. Drivers could opt into the voluntary system in lieu of paying a mandatory highway use fee that first took effect on July 1, 2020. trailer [33] A solution would need to be devised for at-home charging stations. [13] However, one forecast suggests EVs may comprise 17.5 percent of U.S auto sales by 2028. This year, I introduced a bill that Virginians arent forced to buy an electric vehicle, this entire idea of alternative tax for these individuals is just wrong, Newman said. [6] American Petroleum Institute, Gasoline Taxes, July 2020, https://www.api.org/~/media/Files/Statistics/State-Motor-Fuel-Taxes-Charts-July-2020.pdf. If the current structure is preserved, for revenues to match expenses, the federal rate would have to increase by 12.6 cents to 31 cents per gallon and be adjusted regularly to follow increasing costs of road maintenance.[45]. The average tax rate is the total tax paid divided by taxable income. Copyright 2018-2023 Local News Now LLC. Americas highways are largely funded by state, local, and federal motor fuel taxes. Any customer whose credential expired between March 15 and May 31 gets 90 days from the expiration date to renew, and credentials expiring from June 1 to July 31 have until August 31 to get renewed. If Virginia wants to encourage a transition to clean energy and electric vehicles, which is absolutely essential to addressing climate change, we will need to look to other options to pay for transportation projects, Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance President Jason Stanford says. This legislation restructures Virginias transportation funding model and is based on equity and a commitment to a multimodal system, said Secretary of Transportation Shannon Valentine. [37] Use of GPS in Oregon is voluntary to alleviate privacy concerns, though a voluntary system can only work in parallel with a gas tax, which is not a permanent solution. Use The Toll Calculator For A Specific Trip Toll Calculator Otherwise, if you are traveling the full length of the Chesapeake Expressway, these tolls currently apply for the following vehicle classes: Toll as of May 1, 2021. At the federal level, the revenue from motor fuel taxes has not been sufficient to cover transportation expenditures since 2008, and there is no reason to think this development will reverse itself. 31, 2020. https://taxfoundation.org/gas-tax-revenue-decline-as-traffic-drops/. 03-27-2022, 07:22 AM Baike 2,038 posts, read 1,552,989 times Reputation: 441 Internal combustion engines can be loud and dirty, and a motor fuel tax aims to offset their cost to society. In 1956, the rate was increased to 3 cents and the Highway Trust Fund was established to fund the new Interstate Highway System. Essentially, this approach would entail a unique kind of inflation indexing of gas taxes to roughly approximate revenue collections under a VMT. Dulles Greenway (Route 267) Dulles Toll Road (Route 267) Powhite Parkway Extension (Route 76) RMA Expressway System Pocahontas 895 (Route 895) George P. Coleman Bridge (Route 17) Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel (Route 13) Chesapeake Expressway (Route 168) Tractor trailers and heavy-duty trucks also contribute significantly to overall road damage given their weight. If both VMT and location are tracked, it would be possible to differentiate between urban and rural travel. That rate is an average rate for all vehicles but should ideally be lower for passenger cars and higher for heavier vehicles. While the numbers would be different for states, a similar calculation could be made for each state (see Appendix A). The actual rate per vehicle should be differentiated based on weight per axle. Too many parameters would result in an increasingly complex tax design, which would make it less transparent. [41] Congressional Budget Office, Issues and Options for a Tax on Vehicle Miles Traveled by Commercial Trucks, October 2019, 5, https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2019-10/55688-CBO-VMT-Tax.pdf. Weight is an exponential factor for road damage. As an example, an 80,000-pound 5-axle tractor trailer causes the same damage to a road as 9,600 cars even if it only weighs 20 times as much. [48] Jim Parsons, Maryland Shortlists Four Teams for Planned $11B P3 Highway Project, Engineering News-Record, July 20, 2020, https://www.enr.com/articles/49743-maryland-shortlists-four-teams-for-planned-11b-p3-highway-project. Apportionment is the determination of the percentage of a business profits subject to a given jurisdictions corporate income or other business taxes. Highway Use Fee and Mileage-Based User Fee Program The efficiency increases because basing the tax rate on several parameters would incentivize drivers to drive only when the benefits of the drive outweigh the cost. Scan this QR code to download the app now. [25] At the same time, personal vehicles have grown larger. Virginia is reconsidering the future of funding for transportation infrastructure, as the rise of electric and more fuel-efficient vehicles has cut into the gas tax revenue that helps pay for those projects. 901 0 obj <>stream Toll payments are excluded from the calculation. [5] Liz Malm, When Did Your State Enact Its Gas Tax?. An excise tax is a tax imposed on a specific good or activity. Looking at total gas tax collections illustrates this decline. [48] However, according to federal law, not all roads can be toll roads. Inflation indexing refers to automatic cost-of-living adjustments built into tax provisions to keep pace with inflation. For more details, please visit the Highway Use Feeinformation page. Figure 1: HUT Transactions Is North Carolinas Highway Use Tax rate competitive? [2] With the current funding program, the Fixing Americas Surface Transportation Act (FAST Act), expiring this year, Congress must decide how to pay for the Highway Trust Fund in the years to come. This behavior is consistent with other narrow-based excise taxes like cigarette taxes. 0000001643 00000 n [9] This means that the motor fuel tax would ideally tax drivers based on the proportionate damage they do to the roads, among other externalities. On the contrary, it is likely to get worse, driven by technological advances and regulation like theCorporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards. JavaScript must be enabled in order for you to use DMVNow in standard view. The consultant KPMG previously estimated that Virginia would lose nearly 33% of its gas tax revenues by 2030 due to fuel efficiency, or approximately $260 million. [19] According to the Department of Transportation, the average driver drove 13,476 miles in 2018, so the decline in tax burden translates to a difference in annual tax payment of $148 if VMT were constant between 1994 and 2018. 0000004059 00000 n If it is still policymakers aim to fund transportation with taxes levied on transportation, change is needed. [35] This may resolve some of the privacy concerns but leaves questions for how to handle out-of-state drivers. For over 80 years, our goal has remained the same: to improve lives through tax policies that lead to greater economic growth and opportunity. This tax is set to expire in 2022 but this year voters get to decide whether to make it permanent. [13] Laura Bliss, Should Electric Vehicle Drivers Pay Per Mile? Bloomberg, July 23, 2019, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-23/why-charging-electric-cars-for-road-use-is-tricky. According to an article by Neal Augenstein, VDOT estimates that southbound I-95 averages approximately 80,000 vehicles a day in the area. [12] U.S. Energy Information Administration, Annual Energy Outlook 2020, January 2020, 96, https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/aeo2020.pdf. 4. See total trip cost breakdown - tolls, fuel and other charges, tags Vehicle registrations that expire in March, April, and May are also extended for 90 days. The only exceptions are Hawaii, Idaho, and Tennessee. In Maryland, a large P3 project to build tolled express lanes to I-495 and I-270 is underway. 0000004286 00000 n Such a system could potentially also be levied on EVs by taxing battery charges based on the minimum distance an EV can drive on a full charge. This would allow gas stations to collect and remit VMT taxes similar to today, though it would require retrofitting vehicles in ways that could raise privacy and other legal concerns. The formula includes factors of each states share of lane miles of federal aid highways, vehicle miles traveled on federal aid highways, and number of fatalities on the federal aid system. Electric vehicles pay a flat fee ($88.20 This is an example of differentiation based on certain assumptions and could be refined further. To solve the issue, some states find other funding sources outside motor fuel taxes. Based on that calculation, assuming that MPG climbs to 27.5 MPG (1.5 percent improvement a year for five years) in the coming years and tax rates remain flat, the tax burden per VMT would drop from 2.1 cents to 1.84 cents (2018 dollars). A driver must only pay this if they are registering a fuel-efficient vehicle or an electric motor vehicle. 0 Toll payments are excluded from the calculation. For fuel-efficient vehicles, the fee is calculated to reflect the 85 percent of the difference between motor fuel taxes paid on the fuel-efficient vehicle and motor fuel taxes paid by a vehicle driving 23.7 MPG.[34]. [50] This practice further dilutes the concept of motor fuel taxes as a user fee. A flat fee per mile based on vehicle weight measured by the odometer would be the simplest version of a VMT tax to administer and avoids most privacy issues. [43] Congressional Budget Office, Reauthorizing Federal Highway Programs: Issues and Options, 8. Surveys suggest there could be some hurdles to getting the general public to accept a mileage-based fee system, including skepticism of its fairness and privacy concerns. [16] Additionally, MPG in new cars actually declined between 1985 and 2005. Motorcycles get the lowest rate as they cause the least damage and contributes the least to congestion. A gas tax is commonly used to describe the variety of taxes levied on gasoline at both the federal and state levels, to provide funds for highway repair and maintenance, as well as for other government infrastructure projects. 2 Axles - Car, SUV, Van, Pickup. Outlays are projected to outpace current revenue by a cumulative $189 billion over the next decade. Reach Sharmane at 813-504-4479. A vehicle-miles-traveled or mileage-based user fee approach ultimately makes a lot of sense, Stanford said. Another development that could make current tax design antiquated is growth in EV market share, which can also be regarded as positive in its own right. 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