One problem with a wheel tax in larger cities with large employment center (such as Madison), is that it taxes people that have their car registered in the municipality, not the people that drive in the city. Madison sees a daily influx of commuters by car who use our local streets and don't pay a penny to fund the roads. We Madisonians pay the property taxes to fund these local roads. The folks from Verona, Dodgeville, Sauk City, and Fort Atkinson don't pay for Madison roads.
Assessing a wheel tax will simply put more burden on Madison taxpayers to fund roads used by others. And Madison taxpayers are more likely to ride the bus, walk, or bike for many trips because they are more likely to be within walking, biking, or busing distance, so I'm going to guess that Madisonians have a lower per capita number of (motor) vehicle miles traveled than those commuting in from outside the city, thereby putting less strain on the roads. Obviously, this is true anywhere that has huge numbers of commuters coming into the city every day, so it's not just Madison. Places with tourism, sports venues, or other event destinations tend to have local taxes that capture that revenue (hotel taxes, taxes on event tickets, etc.) One way some cities capture the costs of the commuters using their infrastructure is with local income taxes, i.e. you pay a tax based on where you work. One of the problems in Wisconsin is that we cannot assess local sales taxes (with few exceptions, but only counties can, not cities.) That means we can't capture the revenue from food and retail sales from those commuters. There is no perfect way to fund transportation. There are advantages and disadvantages to all methods. And some can be seen as "fair" or "unfair" to various groups. Gas taxes, registration fees, property taxes, local assessments for infrastructure, wheel taxes, tolls, and per mileage fees all have reasons that they are more or less fair to some groups. None perfectly capture revenue needed to pay the costs of transportation or live up to what most people in the U.S. believe is a goal of funding transportation: User pays. Robbie Webber Transportation Policy Analyst 608-263-9984 (o) 608-225-0002 (c) [email protected] All opinions expressed are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer or any other group with which I am affiliated.
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