Trucker tax and politicians — perfect together

Chris Powell looks at our Hartford Democrats’ latest ploy, tolls for trucks.

With elected officials, the best taxes are those that most people can't see or understand and that can't easily be evaded even by the people who  can see and understand them. That's one reason Governor Lamont last week settled on a proposal to impose highway tolls exclusively on trucks. The other reason is that once the toll gantries are in place, they can toll all traffic if trucks-only tolling is found unconstitutional or against federal law. [emphasis added]

The governor says his latest toll proposal could raise nearly $200 million a year for transportation infrastructure. People are supposed to think that this revenue will come only from truckers and not ask where the truckers will get the money. Of course the truckers will get it from raising rates for deliveries throughout Connecticut, thereby raising prices on everything shipped into the state. Most people will pay through intermediaries without realizing that they are paying at all -- politically perfect.

Advocates of this tolling claim that trucks don't pay their "fair share" of taxes while doing most of the damage to Connecticut's highways. But trucks in interstate commerce already pay heavy taxes to all states, including Connecticut, and most of the highway damage in the state is due to its sharply variable climate, not trucks.

But no matter, since the Lamont administration and the Democratic majority in the General Assembly want tolls not for transportation at all but just to avoid economizing in the rest of state government in favor of transportation. Already this year they have diverted transportation fund money to other spending.

Indeed, while the governor was touting tolls again, the University of Connecticut announced that it will raise tuition by 23 percent over five years, almost 5 percent a year. The leader of the state Senate's Republican minority, Len Fasano of North Haven, groused about this and the university's longstanding failure to control costs, but no one else in authority criticized UConn.

Long-time fans of the Hartford crime watch will remember the great “Windfall Profits” tax imposed on state citizens in 1981. Whooped through under the guise of hitting evil, rapacious oil companies, our legislators “forbade” the companies from passing the tax on to consumers. They were warned by every tax law expert who testified on the matter that such a bar would be declared unconstitutional and struck down, so they added a provision that, just like the new truck toll tax, imposed the tax or consumers if the pass-through prohibition were struck down. The new tax was immediately declared unconstitutional by the courts and motorists have been paying it directly ever since. In fact, though it started at 2%, it’s been climbing steadily and was just increased to 8%. Next time you go fill your car or heat your home, you’ll know who to thank.

UPDATE: Do you also remember when gasoline dealers, tired of hearing from customers angry about high gas prices, began placing stickers on the pumps showing the exact amount of federal, state and “windfall profits” taxes? Just as soon as the legislature reconvened it enacted a law banning the practice and the stickers, but not the taxes, disappeared.