In much the same way that lottery proceeds are notionally intended to benefit politically popular projects such as schools or veterans’ care but end up being dumped into the same revenue hole as everything else, the Superfund tax is, like all taxes, fungible. The economics of “tax incidence” - meaning the question of where the burden of a tax falls not de jure but de facto - can get pretty complicated, but it is a safe bet that whether the tax is tacked on at the end of the supply chain or upstream, it will put upward pressure on consumer energy prices. The infrastructure bill had the effect of doubling the prior tax rate on the targeted chemicals, as Deloitte figures it.Īnd there is current progressive environmental policy in miniature: a cheap symbolic I’m-on-your-side gesture to try to buy off the rubes with one hand while sticking the other hand into their deliciously pillageable pockets. The original Superfund tax also included a tax on certain chemicals and related “taxable substances,” and that part of the tax already had been revived by the infrastructure bill signed into law in November 2021. The tax is meant to fund federal environmental-mitigation costs at Superfund sites, and it takes the form of an excise on domestic and imported crude oil, as well as on imported petroleum fuels. mean to raise is not the one you see imposed at the pump, but the so-called Superfund tax, which lapsed in the 1990s but will be, if Manchin and Schumer have their way, coming back with a vengeance. Climate action can’t wait - except when it can.īut now, under the Joe Manchin–Chuck Schumer climate-folly bill - in which the Democrats propose to decrease inflation by flooding the economy with hundreds of billions of dollars in fresh federal spending, akin to treating diabetes with intravenous injections of Mountain Dew - the gasoline tax is going to go up by billions of dollars a year. And while Democrats do intend to make hydrocarbon energy not only more expensive but prohibitively expensive at some point in time, at that moment the rising price of fuel was politically inconvenient. It was a quintessentially political proposal, one that would create the impression of doing something and offer a synthetic sense of urgency - the sort of action that is to real policy as stevia is to sugar.īut there was a kind of reflexive economic truth to it: Policies that make gasoline more expensive make gasoline more expensive. energy industry so that prosperity may emerge organically. It was a dumb idea on its own, and it was a dumb idea because it was offered as a substitute for the smart idea, i.e., getting Uncle Stupid’s big fat foot off the neck of the U.S. A little somethin’-somethin’ to help out all them pickup-driving Joe Sixpack types out there in the great expansive hydrocarbon-powered boonies - you know, voters. You will recall that in the early summer, as gasoline prices were skyrocketing, President Joe Biden, the fearful little man in the White House, called for a three-month suspension of the federal sales tax on gasoline. Senator Joe Manchin, in his wisdom, has decided to join the Biden administration and his fellow Democrats in Congress to - wait! what? - raise the gasoline tax. Raising the Gas Tax after Trying to Cut the Gas Tax I think you’ll find it worth the modest expense. The Tuesday is available only to NRPlus members: If you would like to become one of those - and I hope you will - you can sign up here. Welcome to the Tuesday, a weekly newsletter about politics, language, culture, wooden bricks, strong ales, and other items of interest. Gas prices at a Chevron Station in Los Angeles, Calif., May 30, 2022.
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