With the Virginia Senate under Republican control, one might have assumed that tax increases of any sort would be off the table. But the old saying about “assume” (go look it up) seems to be replaying itself, as the upper house has managed to give its blessing both to an “Amazon” tax and committee approval for a bill that would raise the gas tax each year based upon the inflation rate.
Regarding the Amazon tax, the bill:
Creates a legal presumption to require registration by a dealer for collection of retail sales and use taxes if any commonly controlled person maintains a distribution center, warehouse, fulfillment center, office, or similar location within the Commonwealth that facilitates the delivery of property sold by the dealer to its customers.
This all stems from Amazon locating two distribution centers in the state (thanks in no small part to a hefty taxpayer-funded incentive package). The resident political class, which has tried in the past to slap direct taxes on online sales, bowed to cries from retail lobbyists for “fairness” and got its bill through the Senate. Overwhelmingly.
This will be cheered as loophole closing. It will be rationalized as merely collecting the taxes Virginians are supposed to declare on their returns (but likely don’t). But as Brian Kirwin has previously noted, it walks and talks like a tax increase.
The gas tax indexation bill:
Requires that the motor fuels tax rate be indexed each year to the percentage change in the U.S. Department of Labor’s Producer Price Index for Other Nonresidential Construction from January 1 through December 31 of the year immediately preceding the affected year.
The rationale here is that we need more money for roads. The gas tax hasn’t been raised since 1986, so what better way to increase it — painlessly, if you’re a pol — than by putting those increases on automatic pilot.
It sailed out of the Senate Finance committee on an 11-2 vote, with Sens. Norment and Vogel abstaining.
Chances are, it passes the full Senate.
So here we stand, a few months after an election in which Republicans campaign on the notion that government was too big, its reach too wide and its appetites rarely sated. The message worked (eventually).
In return, we get bills like these.
It’s almost like Senate Republicans have a burning desire to return to the political wilderness.
