Beers Says Repeal The Gas Tax

$3/gal: What Can Government Do?
The largest profiteer from gas prices is government, and Nevada has some of the highest gas prices in America

Bob Beers first proposed repealing the gas tax last year, then again earlier this year. His idea is to replace our reliance on gas tax for funding road construction and maintenance with our existing tax structure. It makes sense from at least three different angles:

• Gas tax is a poor strategic choice to fund road construction and maintenance. It is so bad that a "Blue Ribbon" committee is meeting this interim to figue out what to do. There are two problems:
  • The tax is expressed in pennies per gallon, not a percent, so proceeds to fund our roads do not grow with inflation but our costs to build and maintain roads does grow with inflation.
  • Increasing fuel efficiency results in fewer gallons of gas purchased per hundred miles driven.
  These two factors have combined to pinch our road funding. The "Blue Ribbon" committee's work product has been every kind of tax ever invented by government, plus toll roads.
• We can afford it. In the current biennium, the surplus revenue expected to be generated by our general tax structure is around $550-million. The state portion of the gas tax is only forecast to generate $400-million. Not only can we easily replace our gas tax revenue with general taxes, but our general tax structure has been, and is likely to continue, growing faster than the reasonable growth rate needed to sustain government.
• Best of all, by rebating the surplus starting today, we remove the irresistible urge from lawmakers to encounter a large surplus, refund one-third and hope you don't notice them spending the other two-thirds.