• New taxes New taxes State Sen. Gary Hooser is supporting a bill that would boost Hawai‘i’s excise tax as much as 1 percent. The funds taken on O‘ahu would go towards public transportation in O‘ahu. In Neighbor Island counties
• New taxes
New taxes
State Sen. Gary Hooser is supporting a bill that would boost Hawai‘i’s excise tax as much as 1 percent. The funds taken on O‘ahu would go towards public transportation in O‘ahu. In Neighbor Island counties the county government would decide if it wanted to implement a .5 percent increase, with funds being used for transportation. On Kaua‘i, Hooser says, the funds would buy more buses for the county’s bus system, build bicycle paths and create more county roads.
Also in the works is a proposal to add another tax to owners of vehicles. According to a report in today’s issue of The Garden Island, owners of vehicles worth $20,000 would pay about $200 a year on top of county registration fees.
People that don’t drive vehicles have no worries, Hooser says.
These simplistic statements veil some major problems.
First, our excise tax isn’t a sales tax as found in Main-land states. It’s a pyramiding tax that is amplified as an items moves through a local supply chain. Boosting it even a half-percent could mean as much as a five percent rise in some prices found in retail stores, for various services and in other areas of our economy including rentals.
Adding hundreds of dollars in new taxes to businesses that have fleets of vehicles, on top of the cost to private owners, will also show up in both the cost of doing business and in how much household income on Kaua‘i is taken away by taxes.
Is it worth it to add more taxes to Kaua‘i residents?
The Kaua‘i Bus system is a good one that services mostly low-income workers, those not working, some visitors, the handicapped and seniors. There are not lines of riders being left behind at bus stops ready to fill new buses. Commuting on the bus from outlying areas can take twice as long as driving to work, even longer depending on the route.
As for bicycle paths, the trail being created along the Eastside of Kaua‘i is a great one for recreation. The bike path running along Kuhio Highway from Lihu‘e to Wailua might have a couple rides on it during morning rush hour drives. How will building more bike paths solve our transportation problems?
Our traffic jams are happening on state roads, not county roads. New county roads will probably be needed where new housing is being built; in some cases that cost is being paid by developers. Expanding state roads is an old problem that hasn’t been solved, and likely won’t be solved for a long time.
Right now our main transportation problem is the lack of long-term planning by elected officials over the past 20-30 years. Raising our excise tax to pay for schemes that look like they won’t work isn’t the answer.
What is needed is an expedited solution to the daily traffic jams that drivers coming into Lihu‘e from Kapa‘a and Koloa are facing. The traffic jams in the Wailua-Kapa‘a area now happen most weekdays in the middle of the day, as well on most of the midday on Saturday, in addition to the rush hour drive times.
Government in Hawai‘i needs to grow smarter in how they handle existing funds, not add new taxes to residents for programs that will have little effect on the problem at hand.
