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Arguing the merits of a tax

by Matt Edens

I paid my wheel tax a couple weeks ago. Went down to the county clerk’s office, wrote my check and got my sticker and didn’t even realize I’d paid the tax until it dawned on me days later. And I wonder, if the tax’s passage hadn’t been challenged, how many of you would have done the same (or even noticed at all)?

Lots of folks in Knox County would drop $30 bucks on something without batting an eye—dinner for two at O’Chucks or Ruby’s, for instance.

It’s the principle of the thing that matters, I suppose. Which principally, as best I can figure, amounts to “I want to keep my thirty freakin’ dollars!” Which is a valid argument, I guess. I’d certainly rather spend the money on dinner than on a little vinyl sticker that, half the time, winds up forgotten in my glove box.

Even those who agree that the county needs additional revenue disagree on how to shake it out of the taxpayer. Some prefer a property-tax increase. Others say a wheel-tax is fairer since, of course, everybody drives. That last part—everybody drives—may be more or less true, but I suspect that the folks pushing the notion that renters don’t pay property tax have either never owned rental property, or managed it mighty poorly if they did. Renters may not get the letter from Mike Lowe in the mail, but it’s their money that pays the bill.

People who prefer a property-tax increase, on the other hand, argue that the wheel tax is regressive and constitutes an unwarranted burden on the poor. Personally, I think they’ve misplaced the burden: What’s thirty bucks compared to the cost of owning, maintaining and fueling an automobile for a year? Particularly since failing to ante up essentially relegates one to second-class citizenship. That’s one reason why I prefer the wheel-tax option; it’s a conscious admission of that fact, and a gentle nudge towards doing something about it.

The question is, what? Could the car ever become “optional equipment” for enough of us to matter? For what it’s worth, I already know a handful of reasonably well-off downtown dwellers who’ve declared their autonomy from the automobile (within limits, as they’ll still rent one on occasion). And the vast majority of Knoxville’s carless adults—whether elderly, disabled, extremely poor, or some combination of the three—dwell in the inner city, the one part of town where it could, theoretically, be possible to function without cars (after all, people did for most of Knoxville’s history).

Not that there aren’t obstacles. And the automobile factors into two of the primary ones: too much poverty and not enough density. The car made it possible to live in the ’burbs. Commerce and industry largely followed. As a result, most center-city residents commute to work in the ’burbs. And if that weren’t enough, to make downtown accessible to all those folks who fled, we’ve made access difficult for those without vehicles. Viewed from the sidewalk, Interstates are barriers, not thoroughfares. The infrastructure—and the unrelenting demand for parking—has done much to destroy density, the prime ingredient for pedestrian-oriented commerce and mass transit.

We’re all poorer for it, even you if you live in Powell and would rather be run over by a bus than ride one. TDOT’s annual budget runs a whopping one and a half billion dollars. Consider just a few projects local projects: $62 million for widening I-40 between Papermill and West Hills, $131 million for the downtown I-40 project, $226 million for the Orange Route beltway. And these are just the big projects. Even a small job like the intersection of Kingston Pike and Lyons View cost three-quarters of a million. Those price tags are one reason why I’m not all that crazy about an ad-valorem wheel tax, whether we all drove Hummers or Hondas, the infrastructure still costs the same.

Not that the wheel tax pays for any of that, mind you. Road projects are paid for primarily by gasoline taxes. It’s sort of a “pay as you go” plan and also something of a catch-22: TDOT’s budget depends on people driving farther and more frequently.

I wonder if there’s a similar solution for funding education? It would be nice. But until we find a way to charge everyone a nickel for using their noggin, I’m voting for the wheel tax.

October 28, 2004 • Vol 14, No. 44 © 2004 Metro Pulse