Today, the NH House Finance Committee will hold a hearing on a bill with an amendment. I can’t find either, but I don’t need them.
It recommends that the state drop its gas tax for three months over the summer but just for residents. I have questions.
Gimmick?
Its a gimmick and a bad one because it hides the real pain and problems Biden and Democrats have created through deliberate policy choices. And when the gimmick ends, as it must, the whiplash will be brutal, and whoever signed off on it will take the blame, not the real culprits.
But that’s not the biggest problem.
Revenue?
I’m not worried about revenue. There’s plenty of that sloshing about from online gambling to higher business tax inflows (after we cut the rates) to redirect toward the hole left behind by electric vehicles a gas tax holiday. And as long as we keep Democrats out of control, that will continue to be the case.
And holiday or not, maybe, it’s an excellent time to ditch the NH gas tax as a road toll revenue stream altogether. It’s like smoking. They want to kill it but keep raising the tax, spending it, and relying on it, but the plan is to make it disappear.
Don’t just send it on holiday. Kill it and bury it behind the statehouse.
Residency Requirement
None of that will happen, of course. The tax is supposed to disincentivize use, and removing it would encourage more use. They’ll never go for that. But again, that’s not the biggest problem with the tax holiday amendment, as I understand it.
It proposes to give the discount to residents only and not tourists. Um, how…what?
I’ve been following politics in New Hampshire for nearly fifteen years, so I can ask this question with a straight face. Which residents?
We have students paying out-of-state tuition for four years treated as residents for voting purposes. Denying them that right as opposed to helping them put a stamp on a mail-in ballot for back home is a violation of human rights or something.
But not just them. For more than a decade, almost anyone can show up from any state where they can vote, and I can’t say they are thinking about living there, lying on an affidavit, getting a ballot, voting, then leaving the state.
Our elections have been polluted like this for most of this century and probably longer.
So, whose a frikkin resident?
What does that even mean?
Must you show ID to get the taxless gas price (RACIST!, Gas Tax Holiday Suppression!).
And even if we could separate voting tourists from the other sorts, how exactly do we execute this differential commerce at the pump or the counter?
Do tourists get a separate water fountain gas pump?
I’ve not seen the amendment, so I only have reports from Corporate Media cronies like Gary Rayno, but seriously, what’s the plan?
I have one. Kill the gas tax and use online gambling revenue to pay for highway and road stuff.
The gas stations pay taxes on their revenue, which will go up a lot from loads of secondary traffic.
Just a suggestion and better than the gas tax holiday, if you ask me.
