Political Insider
Some chart magic: House-Senate differences over H.B. 170 explained
Our AJC colleagues Kristina Torres (content) and Isaac Sabetai (coding) have come up with this handy-dandy chart spelling out the current House and Senate differences on H.B. 170, the transportation funding bill. You're welcome:
| Senate | House | |
| Gas tax | 24 cents-per-gallon state excise tax on gasoline and diesel | 29.2 cents-per-gallon state excise tax on gasoline |
| Fees | Annual “highway user impact fee” of $25 per passenger vehicle and $50 per truck or bus.$5 rental car feeUser fee for electric vehicles of $200 per year for private cars and $300 per year for commercial vehicles. | User fee for electric vehicles of $200 per year for private cars and $300 per year for commercial vehicles. |
| Electric vehicle tax credit | Elimination of the $5,000 state tax credit for the purchase of an electric car. | Elimination of the $5,000 state tax credit for the purchase of an electric car. |
| Local tax options | Allowing local cities and counties to collect sales taxes on motor fuel — based on prices as high as $3.39 per gallon — for initiatives including special option local sales taxes, optional education sales taxes and local option sales taxes. Aside from that cap, there would be no restrictions on how local officials may use money collected through those initiatives. | Special option local sales taxes and optional education sales taxes enacted by cities and counties would remain, although any revenue raised from the sale of motor fuels would have to be used for transportation purposes.Local option sales taxes enacted to roll back property taxes or to fund water and sewer projects would also continue, but motor fuel sales would be exempt. Instead, the sales tax rate would increase from 1 percent to 1.25 percent. |
| Other | $250 million annual payment toward debt service for the state Department of Transportation to allow the department to free up a matching amount toward its motor fuel fund to pay for projects statewide. |
About the Author
Jim Galloway, the newspaper’s former political columnist, was a writer and editor at the AJC for four decades.
