Ark. Senate Ponders Truck Tax
The Senate Revenue and Taxation Committee planned its first hearing Friday on legislation by Sen. Cliff Hoofman, a democrat, to tax heavy trucks by weight and distance traveled in Arkansas.
Hoofman would impose a 3.5-cent per mile levy on trucks weighing more than 73,280 pounds and use the extra revenue generated, an estimated $41 million a year, to repair interstates and rural roads alike.
The senator contends his proposal is more fair than the House plan to raise gasoline and diesel taxes each by a penny a year over three years, beginning July 1, and refer the bond issue to voters in a special election.
The fuel tax hikes would raise about $55 million a year when fully implemented, $10 million of which would go toward repaying the bonds for interstate construction if the voters approved them, or with the rest for highway construction if voters rejected the bonds.
Cities and counties would split 30 percent of the new money, and the measure would phase out a $13 million cap on special revenues counties receive for specially designated roads.
Hoofman believes the proposal puts a disproportionate share of the increase on passenger vehicles.
"The need for repairs on our roads, whether they be interstates or other highways, is because of heavy trucks,"while the diesel tax would raise only $13 million of the new money that the fuel tax increases would generate when fully implemented, Hoofman said. "What sense of fairness is that?"
The Arkansas Motor Carriers Association has called the weight-distance tax "onerous, regressive and impossible to collect efficiently."
Another Senate highway alternative introduced Thursday would increase the diesel tax at a higher rate than the gas tax and tap the state sales tax to improve roads.
The bill, by Sen. Jack Critcher, would increase the gas tax by 2 cents a gallon, the diesel tax by 4 cents a gallon and raise the state sales tax by three-eights of a cent through 2003 to fund highway improvements on a pay-as-you-go basis.
After local governments get their 30 percent share, Critcher said, the Highway Department would received $170 million annually from the sales tax hike, $12 million from the diesel tax increase and $18 million from higher gas taxes.
