Don't give em any ideas On A Bicycle tax. Next thing is a shoe tax because walkers are wearing out the pavement.
Excellent point! The problem exists all over the DC metro area. Folks live in one jurisdiction to gain a recurring property tax advantage yet work in another. The same is true for cars that above all can cross boundaries to achieve an advantage. Bob Wilson
You are correct that the VA property tax system was not intended to discriminate against hybrid owners with higher taxes on hybrids. That is simply the result, even though not intended. I have no buyers remorse...that's incorrect. I bought a Prius in 2006 before these problems, and I am not paying the new Hybrid fees until 2017 ( I have registered my car out to 2017). What I am thinking about is what my next car, and I say maybe not a Hybrid under the circumstances.
Didn't buy the Prius to belong to a "group". Apparently the people here in VA are more tolerant than the people in the Huntsville AL area. I'll stick with the vadc data. VDACS - Virginia Agriculture - Facts & Figures
Virginia's governor's claims the purpose of the VA tax is to replace the lost Federal gaso tax as well as the (minimal) lost state gaso tax. He claims the state gets this Federal money back for roads.
...never heard of them, but perhaps you are onto something, from Wikipedia: Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company ALEC was the subject of the September 29, 2012 edition of Moyers & Company[31] hosted by Bill Moyers.[32] In the report, Moyers traced the progress of ALEC model legislation through several legislatures. He called it "an organization hiding in plain sight, yet one of the most influential and powerful in American politics... They were smart and understood something very important: that they might more easily get what they wanted from state capitals than from Washington, DC. So they started putting their money in places like Raleigh, North Carolina; Nashville, Tennessee; Phoenix, Arizona; and Madison, Wisconsin."[32]
The fuel tax is a dead way to collect revenue for state and local governments. Have our elected officials not seen the federal mandates for all vehicles to become far more fuel efficient? How do they justify discriminating against Prius owners when all auto and light truck makers are working hard to make their products more fuel efficient? Heavy truck makers are in the game also as trucking companies and owner/operators make their meeger profits on the margins. The states see a group that they can exploit and they are doing it. It is tragic that these same law makers do nothing to stop the "Puffer Trucks" that haunt our roads. I see these light trucks with turbo diesel engines and aftermarket computers that the user turns the fuel ratio up, resulting in huge trails of black smoke behind them. If you are unlucky enough to be anywhere near these trucks when the driver decides to crap on his fellow Americans, then you know to turn off the heat/ac/ventilation and do anything possible to get away from the attack. And what about the contractors running around with huge tired pimped out rides while writing off a large percentage of their annual fuel cost? We pay for them to play.
Just another attempt to transfer wealth by 'whacking a hippy' to subsidize poor mileage vehicles. Bob Wilson
If $64 helps the largest supplier of jobs and money to the state economy then I'm ok with that. VDACS - Virginia Agriculture - Facts & Figures Cheaper fuel means cheaper shipping costs, and in a state with one of the busiest container ports in the country that means cheaper goods for everyone, regardless of political status or industry. $64 well spent.
Then you have the problem with the facts and data, what the Census reports. Plus the obvious, it is not pro-rated by vehicle mileage but limited to two narrow classes of vehicles, hybrids and EVs. Bob Wilson
No problem with facts here. VDACS - Virginia Agriculture - Facts & Figures "Agriculture is Virginia’s largest industry by far, with nothing else coming a close second. The industry has an economic impact of $55 billion annually and provides more than 357,000 jobs in the Commonwealth. The industries of agriculture and forestry together have a total economic impact of $79 billion and provide more than 500,000 jobs in the Commonwealth.Every job in agriculture and forestry supports 1.5 jobs elsewhere in the Virginia economy. Production agriculture employs nearly 60,000 farmers and workers in Virginia and generates approximately $2.9 billion in total output. Value-added industries, those that depend on farm commodities, employ an additional 76,000 workers and generate $26 billion in total industrial output. Agriculture-related industries contribute an additional 221,000 jobs and nearly $26 billion in total output."
Governor McDonnell of VA has said, and I paraphrase only slightly, there is no way to "sugar coat" it, Northern VA is hit hard with new taxes in the new transportation bill. The Gov said, except for Northern VA, the rest of the state should NOT see any net tax increase, because the Gov got his request to lower state gasoline taxes. I hope the out-of-staters reading this thread realize, that those Virginians in this thread, who favor the new VA transportation bill provisions, are not the Northern VA residents.
Nova got the tax to pay for the road projects in nova. No more, no less. If nova residents want niceties such as the ongoing lengthening of the I95 HOV lane, then they need to realize that these things are not free, and that they, the users of such niceties, need to pay for them. Not people 150 miles away.
I do not think that is true...I think NoVA pays 60% of the taxes and gets 40% of the revenues back from the state. It will be even more skewed with the new bill. Let's just realize our state politics results in North VA bearing more of the tax burden.
Nova bears more of the burden because that's where the road projects are. I have been here since 2009 and nova has been under constant construction as long as I have lived in VA. If you don't like the taxes, stop the public works projects.
Here are some constructive steps we took in Virginia: You have to realize that hybrids have no (zero) public interest support groups. Here in VA the environmental group Chesapeake Climate Action Network realized this, and they stepped in to fill the void. They conducted a "Prius Parade" in Richmond which was successful in getting the hybrid fee removed from the bill. What happened next was a month or so later, the repubs sneaked the hybrid provision back in at the bill at the very last minute, and many dems did not pick up on it. By then the dems were too proud to admit they got snookered - except at least one key democrat admitted he was snookered. In addition, several key legislators organized a NoHybridFee.com petition. This was posted on PriusChat. These same legislators plan to organize a repeal effort.
Well, the oil companies lost something like $135 a month as I threw away a van that guzzled 50 gallons a month. Now, I barely donate $35 a month to oil barons. So the morons (pardon me) are trying to make up the difference.
