Tax Break for Cycling

[znfdl]

Came across this article. If it passed, it would to good to be true. Needless to say, that I do not need a tax break to continue to commute to work. If hybrid owners get a break, why not the ultimate green machine.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=1902061&page=1

[Sandy]

Do racers get a time break or a big head start, if they race with Spectrums?? :) :)



:) Supersonic Spaceship Speedster Serotta Sandy :)

[JeffreyG]

Sounds Great!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :banana: :banana:

I hope everyone on this forum calls their representatives and let them know they want this bill passed.

Squeaky Wheels Get Grease :D

[Ahneida Ride]

I ride my Pogostick to work, I too want a tax break.

More government intervention. And how will this be policed?
Who will monitor how many miles you have ridden.
I guess we need a separate government agency monitoring our miles.

No, we need two, One for pogo sticks and one for bike.
How bout people that walk. Who will monitor them ? Three agencies.

I will immediately write to stop this absurdity.

[JohnS]

Everyone hates special interests unless they are a member of them... :confused:

[znfdl]

I ride my Pogostick to work, I too want a tax break.

More government intervention. And how will this be policed?
Who will monitor how many miles you have ridden.
I guess we need a separate government agency monitoring our miles.

No, we need two, One for pogo sticks and one for bike.
How bout people that walk. Who will monitor them ? Three agencies.

I will immediately write to stop this absurdity.

Ahneida, I would love to see you commute to work on a pogo stick.

Actually the governance of this program could work in the same manner as my federal subsidized public transpotation. Every month, I have to sign a form stating that I will use public transportation to get to work and my agency then disperses the funds to me in the form of a metro card. My agency makes a determination if I am eligible. No third party agency oversight.

Of course for the genral public there will be people who will abuse the system.

I know that if I had to drive to and from downtown Washington DC every day that I would use approximately 4 gallons of gas per day or 20 gallons per week.

If the owner of a hybrid car gets a tax break, why not a bike commuter?

[coylifut]

The house sponsor of the bill walks his talk and commutes by bike daily. Before I moved my office I'd see him roll by every day with his pant leg stuffed in his sock.

[flydhest]

Znfdl,
I too am sometimes miffed at walking by the metrochecks lines where people have their commute subsidized or paid for completely. It hurts the worst when it happens the day after buy a new chain because the winter commute is over and the salt and slush has killed a chain . . . and tires.

The stated goal of such programs is to reduce driving and thereby pollution. As you point out, why not get more bang?

Also as you point out, it doesn't change our behavior, and I'll bike anyway but the seeming contradiction is annoying. The counter-argument is that cyclist cycle, and that it would be very difficult to induce more people to bike to work, and not having a subsidy doesn't keep cyclists from riding, so it would just be a transfer of wealth without any benefit in terms of outcome. The metro/car decision may be an easier one on which to sway people with bribes . . . err, subsidies.

[znfdl]

flydhest:

I agree with you that it is a wealth transfer issue. However, as a commuter on the W&OD trail for years, I have seen that there is a poisitive relationship to the number of commuters on the bike trail. When gas goes up, so do the number of commuters.

Now if you at the average joe who would use 20 gallons of gas per week, $60 per week, $3,000 per year cost.

Now if you could entice a person to commute, the commuter would save the $3,000 plus $100 per month tax benefit for a savings of $4,200 per year. That might just entice a few people if it the argument was couched in the right manner.

I am lucky, as my commute is mostly bike trail and I have a closet in my office and showers in the gym.

Hopefully we can argue this at Notrott over a good glass of something red.......

[flydhest]

znfdl,

Just as a warning, I tend to argue both sides of things :D

The other thing that I'll want to talk with you about at Nottrott is the W&OD and using it to get out to the country in western VA.

Pete's bringing the red, so we're in luck!

[Serotta PETE]

flydhest:

I agree with you that it is a wealth transfer issue. However, as a commuter on the W&OD trail for years, I have seen that there is a poisitive relationship to the number of commuters on the bike trail. When gas goes up, so do the number of commuters.

Now if you at the average joe who would use 20 gallons of gas per week, $60 per week, $3,000 per year cost.

Now if you could entice a person to commute, the commuter would save the $3,000 plus $100 per month tax benefit for a savings of $4,200 per year. That might just entice a few people if it the argument was couched in the right manner.

I am lucky, as my commute is mostly bike trail and I have a closet in my office and showers in the gym.

Hopefully we can argue this at Notrott over a good glass of something red.......


Did someone mention a glass of red!!!!!!!! I will argue any side any time for a glass of red from Seth. (only thing that would make it better is his great cooking////hint hint...

[znfdl]

yes, i will be bringing a two year vertical of some pinot's from

www.williamsselyem.com

[Onno]

I don't think it makes sense to give monthly or yearly tax breaks to cyclists. It seems too difficult to monitor or set up. It is in the interest of government, though, to encourage behavior that benefits society at large, and to discourage behavior that harms it. This is why a gas guzzler tax (extra tax on vehicles that get less than 25 mpg, say), or just a plain gas tax (i.e. an even bigger tax on gas) is an excellent idea, and eliminating tax on bicycles is also an excellent idea. The tax break on hybrids is when you purchase them, isn't it? Why not do the same for all bikes?

Onno

[flydhest]

znfdl,
Maybe Onno is right. I'm not sure you and I know anything about economics anyway.

You're point about the subsidization for public transportation that happens for all government workers and many in the private sector is probably an aberration.

Silly me, for decreasing the consumption of gasoline, my first suggestion would be to tax the consumption of gasoline, but what do I know?

[Ahneida Ride]

On Monday I pogo stick to work. ( I'll sign a form that I do. )
On Tuesday I ride my bike.
On Wednesday I roller blade.
On Thursday I use my horse. ( I must pay a horse poo poo tax )
On Friday I use my home office.

and I want a tax deduction for each one. a pogo metro card,
a horse card, roller blade card and a home office card.

Yes a bicycling card will definitely be an effective form of policeing ones
miles to work.

Where is stated in the US Constitution that the Government dictates
how I get to work?

How one gets to work is one's own business. No-one should be subsidized
for getting to work. This is just more tax code for social engineering.

When I drive I now combine several errands at once. I want a tax
break for that also.

But I am just some dumb schumck, what do I know ....
The Goverment always knows best!

[Ahneida Ride]

We forgot about the BOAT tax. Boats burn tons of gas. Let's tax
em. 5 miles/ gal. is real good for a boat.

But if the boat owner ride his bike to the boat, he gets a tax break.

We had a yacht tax. It was repealed. Yachts stopped selling.
Thousands were laid off.

[gasman]

I think Onno and Fly have the right idea. If gas was $5 /gallon there would be a lot more high milage cars, more bike commuters and fewer large SUVs on the road. It would drive up the price of many other goods and services and I don't know what the end result would be to the economy.

We will all find out what happens in several more years as gas supplies begin to become more scarce and prices continue to climb. Interesting times.

[Jeremy]

Another intrusive boondoggle. If there were no tax breaks for any special interests, then all of us would keep a lot more of our own money. Targeted tax breaks mean that government has the power to regulate our personal choices. Once the door is open, everyone wants in on the action. It would be better for all of us if the door was closed.

Jeremy

[palincss]

More government intervention. And how will this be policed?
Who will monitor how many miles you have ridden.
I guess we need a separate government agency monitoring our miles.


You can deduct mileage from your taxes for travel for education, medical treatment, charitable volunteer work, etc. There is no government agency that polices that; why should any other tax deduction for mileage be different?

:argue:

[Jeremy]

You can deduct mileage from your taxes for travel for education, medical treatment, charitable volunteer work, etc. There is no government agency that polices that; why should any other tax deduction for mileage be different?

:argue:


The government agency that polices that is the IRS.

Jeremy

[palincss]

Now if you at the average joe who would use 20 gallons of gas per week, $60 per week, $3,000 per year cost.

Now if you could entice a person to commute, the commuter would save the $3,000 plus $100 per month tax benefit for a savings of $4,200 per year. That might just entice a few people if it the argument was couched in the right manner.


The problem is, if you live so far away that you're burning 4 gallons of gas a day, you almost certainly live too far away from work to commute by bicycle!

OTOH, there are plenty of people who live within 8-10 miles one way of work. And if they ride, they do save a lot of money. If you drive & have to pay to park, you are probably spending at least $40 a week just on the parking; at today's gas prices, you're well over fifty bucks a week without factoring insurance, wear on the car, depreciation, etc.. At those rates, it doesn't take long to pay for even a very expensive commuting bicycle, whether you get subsidized or not.

[Birddog]

Another intrusive boondoggle. If there were no tax breaks for any special interests, then all of us would keep a lot more of our own money.
But those SOB's that go around saying they are "public servants" wouldn't have near as much power.

Birddog

[znfdl]

The problem is, if you live so far away that you're burning 4 gallons of gas a day, you almost certainly live too far away from work to commute by bicycle!

OTOH, there are plenty of people who live within 8-10 miles one way of work. And if they ride, they do save a lot of money. If you drive & have to pay to park, you are probably spending at least $40 a week just on the parking; at today's gas prices, you're well over fifty bucks a week without factoring insurance, wear on the car, depreciation, etc.. At those rates, it doesn't take long to pay for even a very expensive commuting bicycle, whether you get subsidized or not.

palincss:

I live in Vienna and travel to downtown DC, how do you say stop and go traffic, which at the wrong time of day would be close to 2 hours. I have a Subaru Forrester, which does not get the best gas mileage, which is why I leave it at home. My bike commute is a little over 40 miles round trip, which I do 3-4 times a week. You should check out the bikeforums.net very long commute club, there is a person in Australia who does 60 miles a day, 5 days a week. I would probably do a regular commute up to one and half hour each way. Luickily, my commmute takes just over an hour :D

[JohnS]

palincss:

I live in Vienna and travel to downtown DC, how do you say stop and go traffic, which at the wrong time of day would be close to 2 hours. I have a Subaru Forrester, which does not get the best gas mileage, which is why I leave it at home. My bike commute is a little over 40 miles round trip, which I do 3-4 times a week. You should check out the bikeforums.net very long commute club, there is a person in Australia who does 60 miles a day, 5 days a week. I would probably do a regular commute up to one and half hour each way. Luickily, my commmute takes just over an hour :DYou're missing the point...you're a cyclist! People that aren't will not bike that far. You consider it enjoyment, they consider it WORK. People in SUV's will just b1tch about gas prices, but continue to buy it. Just like they continue to smoke no matter how much cigarette prices go up.

[znfdl]

Trust me I got the point. I am a member of the Very Long Commute Club over on Bikeforums.net. I have listened to the stories of people who were not in shape and then set out a commmuting goal.

For example, there is one person who rides from Silver Spring to Downtown DC. When he started commuting, he was close to 300 lbs and now he is down to 220. His biking experience prior to commuting was almost nil.

A person who I worked with also started to commute to work and lost 60 lbs. Again this is a person who had almost no biking experience.

Each person started to ride to work to save money. If you gave them an added $$$ incentive to ride they might have started sooner. I am just wondering how many other people might be on the fence of to commute to work on a bike or not to commute on a bike to work. At some point if the reward is valuable enough people will change their habits.

[flydhest]

A couple points:

JohnS, there has been a response of sales of SUVs to changes in fuel prices over the past several years. Stories I've read suggest there is some price response. How big is, of course, open to debate. Similarly, there is likely some increase in cycling, but I would agree with most people's guess that the effect is small. I would love to be wrong and don't really have the data to analyze it. One real problem there is that summertime often sees increases in gas prices which is when cycling tends to rise also. Seasonal adjustment can be a tricky thing.

There are many SOB public servants who give up a good deal of income they could make in the private sector out of a sense of duty to country. Clearly, there are those who abuse their positions, but there are so many rank-and-file government employees who work their rears off while sacrificing much higher pay, that to malign them in a blanket statement is wrong and displays ignorance.

Ahneida, in his inimitable way, brings up some valid points. Suppose we knew with certainty that we could influence commuting behavior with taxes/subsidies. Would we want to? Would we want to induce people to commute by bike (over other alternatives) if we could? I say yes, but it's a valid question to ask, which Ahneida does with humor. Jeremy makes a similar case from a pragmatic as well as philosophical point of view (but he's wrong about people's choices being "regulated." I assume he meant a different word). I don't believe that government intervention has to be inefficient and misguided, but the reality is our political process often has that as the result. One could agree with the goal, but believe that political action to achieve it will result in a worse outcome.

My view of public policy is that, all else equal, simpler is better. If we believe that burning of gasoline imposes costs on society, then that is where the effort should be focused. Not on bike riding, not on public transit ridership, but directly on the problem. After that, once people must confront the cost of their actions, then let them choose their path. No gas-guzzler tax, no boat tax, no bike subsidy . . . but that's just my view.

The debate is easily understood, in my view, by the debate about mortgage interest deductions. Renters complain that if homeowners get a tax break for owning a house, they should get a tax break for renting. Assuming that the world is broken down into two parts, home owners and renters (very close to the truth) then a tax break for both is a tax break for neither.

Bike-policy question: Is biking a "good thing" for our society and should there be any policy to encourage it? I can easily imagine a yes to the first and a no to the second.

[Ray]

How did I miss this thread?

First, it would be nice to think that we could live in a world without government intrusion/incentives, etc. But we don't, never have, and aren't likely to soon. So, the question is WHICH govt intrusions and incentives make sense.

We, through our government, have been subsidizing the automobile in more ways than your average mathmatician can count for 50+ years. That was government intrusion, no? Through that intrusion, we've managed to get ourselves, as a society, good and addicted to the automotive way of life, suburban living, and all that entails. As oil becomes a more and more expensive commodity, we have to change directions, kick the habit, etc. We'll do a lot of it without the government, but as long as they exist, they have a role to play. Cold turkey hurts like hel! in getting over most any addiction, so the question is how to ease the transition.

I agree that the best way to get people out of their cars is to increase the tax on gasoline rather than to give incentives for other modes of travel. But not many politicians have gotten elected in the last 20 years campaigning on raising ANY sort of taxes. So the next alternative if you can't RAISE the cost of what you want to penalize, is to LOWER the cost of the alternatives or just flat reward people for using them. So if we're already doing that with transit, we ought to do it for other alternatives too - the bicycle being the case in point.

It sounds somewhat simpler to me to give the incentive/tax break at the time of purchase, but for the average commuter bike (probably a $500 hybrid of some sort), there's only so much economic benefit to be derived at the point of sale. So a program like the one being proposed makes sense even though it's a difficult one to administer. But the govt administers all sorts of difficult programs and does so pretty badly in a lot of cases. That doesn't mean they don't still make a difference and shouldn't still be pursued despite the inevitable waste, fraud, and abuse.

I vote AYE. But I bet the ayes don't have it.

-Ray

[Birddog]

There are many SOB public servants who give up a good deal of income they could make in the private sector out of a sense of duty to country.

That was my remark about the SOB's, I should have been more precise, I was referring to ELECTED, so called, "public servants". A very large number of them are seemingly wandering the halls of Congress totally intoxicated with their power, and they have little in their backgrounds that give them any credibilty in tinkering with the economy.

Birddog

[flydhest]

That was my remark about the SOB's, I should have been more precise, I was referring to ELECTED, so called, "public servants". A very large number of them are seemingly wandering the halls of Congress totally intoxicated with their power, and they have little in their backgrounds that give them any credibilty in tinkering with the economy.

Birddog

Nasty tone of my response is hereby retracted. Thanks for the clarification.

[Jeremy]

[QUOTE=Ray]How did I miss this thread?

First, it would be nice to think that we could live in a world without government intrusion/incentives, etc. But we don't, never have, and aren't likely to soon. So, the question is WHICH govt intrusions and incentives make sense.


While the above statement is undoubtably true now, it does not necessarily mean that it should always be this way. It seems to me that justifying new state intrusuions to compensate for previous state intrusions is a recipe for an ever growing government that will eventually choke on it's own excess. From a philosophical point of view, I don't believe that it is a legitimate function of government to manipulate personal choices with rewards and punishments through the tax code. However, I realize that this is not a majority opinion. It seems to me that this concept of social engineering inevitably pits citizens against each other, arguing for their slice of the pie. At the same time, this incredibly complex and economically burdensome tax system makes all of us poorer.

Thanks,

Jeremy

[Ahneida Ride]

Mr. A deposits 100K in the Bank.
Mr. B purchases a fancy 500 hp sports car.
Mr. C purchases a 500 hp speed boat.

Who do we tax the most ?

Mr A. of course ! He must pays 9 times the gas guzzler tax.

By depositing 100K in a bank account, the banks now have up to
900K to lend out, using the magic of fractional reserve.
Fractional reserve beats cold fusion hands down.

That means an additional 9 sports cars polluting,
or 9 speed boats wasting gas, or perhaps 5 cars and
4 boats, or perhaps even one 900K McMansion squandering our precious
lumber and natural resources.

[flydhest]

tax whom . . . objective case of the pronoun.

[Ahneida Ride]

Fly

Whom shall I now contact to discover the discontinued M3 number?

[znfdl]

Fly

Whom shall I now contact to discover the discontinued M3 number?

Actually:

We should have Fly raise interest rates to 20%, cause a severe downturn in the Economy, no one can afford to drive then more people bike. :D

[Onno]

From a philosophical point of view, I don't believe that it is a legitimate function of government to manipulate personal choices with rewards and punishments through the tax code. However, I realize that this is not a majority opinion. It seems to me that this concept of social engineering inevitably pits citizens against each other, arguing for their slice of the pie. At the same time, this incredibly complex and economically burdensome tax system makes all of us poorer. Jeremy

Government is by its very nature a form of social engineering, and one that we all obviously benefit from. It provides defense, roads and other infrastructure, and regulations to keep us from descending into chaos. Since we will run out of oil sooner or later, one could argue that manipulating tax policy in order to discourage gas consumption and encourage alternate forms of energy (including human via BICYCLES!) is a matter of prudence, a defense against future hardship and chaos. Therefore, bring on the stink-potter tax (recreational motorboating being a nearly insane waste of resources), and the gas guzzler tax, and give tax breaks to cyclists and sailors! Oh, and to bicycle manufacturers as well.

Onno

[JohnS]

A couple points:


There are many SOB public servants who give up a good deal of income they could make in the private sector out of a sense of duty to country. Clearly, there are those who abuse their positions, but there are so many rank-and-file government employees who work their rears off while sacrificing much higher pay, that to malign them in a blanket statement is wrong and displays ignorance.

.
Are you talking about yourself? :)

[William]

How do I get the cap off my valve stem???? :confused:





William ;)

[Ray]

How do I get the cap off my valve stem???? :confused:





William ;)
I'm proposing a $100 per month tax credit for all those who can remove the cap from their valve stems. I bet you'd figure it out!

Social engineering at its finest.

-Ray