Ohio Gas Tax Increase

[alarmguy]

Originally Posted by Reddy45
I see nothing here that is controversial. Nobody wants to pay additional gas taxes, but if you want nice roads then that's the most logical way to fund them. The tax on the EVs makes sense because Teslas use the same roads as every other car and induce wear and tear in the same manner.

Glad you lost the front plate requirement!


Government always has an excuse to take more money out of your paycheck.
The reason the roads are cr+p there is wasteful spending.

When government wants more money from your paycheck, they will pick the most plausible excuse/reason and method that the public will accept.
SO, ruin down and neglect the roads, use the gas tax money for other special interests or to balance the horrible budget and then proposed a gas tax increase to fix them.
Joe public says = Good Idea!

 

[fdcg27]

Originally Posted by TurboLuver
Originally Posted by fdcg27
Originally Posted by TurboLuver
Originally Posted by fdcg27
Those who say that the money will go to the homeless, the poor or otherwise be diverted have no idea what they're talking about.
Those who say that the funds will simply disappear are terminally clueless.


And you know this how? Please enlighten us dimwitted mouth breathers.


Well, the dimwitted mouth breathers could start with learning a little bit about Ohio's budget process as well as the fact that no funds, not even those granted by the federal government or from agency revenue streams may be expended without statutory authority.
The proposed FYs 20-21 budget is easily found online. Have a look.
Basically, the state's budget divides into General Revenue Fund (GRF) revenues, which consist mostly of revenues from the state sales tax and the personal income tax and General Serviced Fund (GSF) revenues, which consists of many streams of revenue with dedicated flows, you know, things like the gas tax, vehicle licensing fees, hunting and fishing licenses and so on.

The state also borrows money for capital projects, but this represents only a small fraction of total expenditures.
So you see, funds can't simply flow to an unauthorized use without notice. There is a body known as the Controlling Board which authorizes all releases of capital funds and can approve certain other technical adjustments to the state's budget, but the hearings of this body are open to the public and its decisions are published online.
Nothing about the whole process that isn't perfectly transparent. Ohio also has a fairly robust open records law, in case you want to look deeply into the operations of any given agency down to the most granular level.
I hope that the above helps you understand that funds can't simply disappear. There is both accountability and full disclosure.
Now, whether or not you agree with the spending priorities the state adopts is another matter, but the process itself is pretty easy to understand.


First off, thank you for the info, it has provided a wealth of reading material. A preliminary scan has proved quite interesting.

Secondly, I never stated I thought the funds would disappear, or for that matter, that I was against the tax increase. I simply wanted to know how much revenue was taken in
and where it was spent.

Finally, I'm not an accountant but I'm sure we are all aware of, shall we say, creative accounting practices. With that said, the documents I found with a nudge in the right
direction provided by your post are, for the most part, what I was looking for.


There is some creative accounting, but its typically benign and has no effect upon actual expenditures but rather upon how they're recognized.
As an example, let's say that the state ends a fiscal year with a significant cash balance. The last payroll for that fiscal year will usually be liquidated with cash in the following fiscal year. Since the state's accounting is mostly on a cash basis, the expense is recognized in the current year while on an accrual basis it's actually a prior year expense. Could a journal entry be done to move that payroll expense back to the prior fiscal year, thereby soaking up the excess cash balance left in the prior FY?
Sure!
Has this ever been done?
Do a little research and you'll find the answer.
There was a former director of Ohio OBM who wrote an interesting book on how the agency made things work.

 

[JetStar]

Last year in Indiana we got a new wheel tax to pay for roads, then my county added another wheel tax, you guessed it, to fix the roads.
Building up to this there was discussion about falling gas tax revenue due to fuel efficiency and EVs.
We'll see what happens.

 

[Vern_in_IL]

IMO I think it would be cool if a State eliminates their gas tax, 100%. But adjust the fee for car registration/Sticker renewal to reflect the reduced revenue.
This way "out of State" folks won't get punished, things will be generally cheaper, and it would promote responsible ownership of vehicles.

 

[Rmay635703]

I see nothing here that is controversial. Nobody wants to pay additional gas taxes,

Glad you lost the front plate requirement!

The trouble is there are only 12,500 plug ins in Ohio

The target of the tax is affecting plain gas hybrids which is illegal and violates equal protection laws. AKA no matter how many times they push it a car that runs on only gas shouldn’t be taxed extra compared a similar only gas car. This is similar to taxing fuel economy, which is also illegal but it’s not stopping boneheaded legislators from trying to punish econobox owners.

Equal protection laws are why you don’t see special taxes for a 2 door car or for red paint or for an automatic transmission

If they want to increase gas tax, fine
But if they want to tax specific gas cars differently for no reason, hard no

I would even hold their nose to the grinder for trying to tax the 0.1% EVs on the road in Ohio, it typically costs $5M+ large to implement a law and doing so on such a small number of cars is ignorant, especially when the EV tax is far above the $50 a normal economy car pays a year in gas taxes in Ohio.

IMO I think it would be cool if a State eliminates their gas tax, 100%. But adjust the fee for car registration/Sticker renewal to reflect the reduced revenue.
This way "out of State" folks won't get punished, things will be generally cheaper, and it would promote responsible ownership of vehicles.

Sound great in theory until you realize state DMVs average 50% efficiency at loosing taxes collected to legal and administrative.

To do what you suggest you would have to pay double what you do now, worse the tax is regressive choosing who is allowed to own a car

Registration fees drive millions of dollars in legal, court and policing that are never recovered .

As an example my uncle stopped paying insurance, registration and license fees for at least 10 years, at any given moment in time at least 15% of cars on road aren’t registered .

Gas taxes on the other hand are the only successful and efficient tax in the country at over 99% efficient requiring very minimal legal and administrative.

Most road funding comes from the general funds, there is actually no need for registration taxes on private citizens and general taxation is less regressive.

Millions of dollars in Every state could be saved from if annual plates on private citizens were eliminated .

 

[wpod]

Looks like they took a page out of California play book. More gas taxes for infrastructure. California played games for years with those gas taxes, moving them into general fund for leftist pet projects. They raised the taxes under the guise of necessity for road repair. Worse, the public voted to retain the increase. Ughh!

Californians like their taxes. It seems all states have the same politician crime gang.

 

[wpod]

IMO I think it would be cool if a State eliminates their gas tax, 100%. But adjust the fee for car registration/Sticker renewal to reflect the reduced revenue.
This way "out of State" folks won't get punished, things will be generally cheaper, and it would promote responsible ownership of vehicles.

Out of state people are using the roads.

 

[PandaBear]

Since most discussion on taxes are political, so in before the lock. Still there are only 4 ways to pay for the roads:

1) Toll road every road (Welcome to Texas), your gas is cheaper but you still pay a lot
2) Tax the fuel (Welcome to California), your gas is expensive but you probably can drive on all of them free
3) Tax the general tax like sales tax, property tax, state income tax, whatever else you can think of
4) Tax the registration, so you better sell your excessive cars and stay with just 1 per driver

 

[Pew]

Since most discussion on taxes are political, so in before the lock. Still there are only 4 ways to pay for the roads:

1) Toll road every road (Welcome to Texas), your gas is cheaper but you still pay a lot
2) Tax the fuel (Welcome to California), your gas is expensive but you probably can drive on all of them free
3) Tax the general tax like sales tax, property tax, state income tax, whatever else you can think of
4) Tax the registration, so you better sell your excessive cars and stay with just 1 per driver

Come to Illinois and you can have all the above

 

[Slow Car Sport Mode]

All ships rise in a rising tide, I don't see nearly as many EVs as everyone seems to think there are....

 

[tbm5690]

Since most discussion on taxes are political, so in before the lock. Still there are only 4 ways to pay for the roads:

1) Toll road every road (Welcome to Texas), your gas is cheaper but you still pay a lot
2) Tax the fuel (Welcome to California), your gas is expensive but you probably can drive on all of them free
3) Tax the general tax like sales tax, property tax, state income tax, whatever else you can think of
4) Tax the registration, so you better sell your excessive cars and stay with just 1 per driver

Above the revenue source, it's how the state manages funds as a whole. Look up a map showing states with best and worst roads...it will look very similar to another map that floats around every 4 years.

 

[53' Stude]

Come to PA and then you will see gas tax. Stop whining. It’s cheaper in OH and WV.

 

[53' Stude]

It's all relative to where you live...pros and cons everywhere. No emissions or inspections here, registration is under $100/year for most newer vehicles and 23¢/gallon in tax. The price for this? Winters are -20F or colder. I'm sick of folks complaining when temps reach the teens out East and they feel they can't go outside...all relative.

Point is, you and I chose to live where we do.

Yes sir. Great point

 

[M56959]

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