Oregon Will Be First US State to Tax Bicycles for Transportation Projects

 That's great news. If there's one thing our government does well, it's using tax money wisely...

 In Britain a chocolate covered cake is considered a staple food item and exempt from sales tax. A chocolate covered biscuit (cookie to you americans) is considered a luxury item and is taxed. Mcvities successfully won a court case against the British government to remove tax from Jaffa Cakes, which are (according to the court case) very small cakes, which are packaged and consumed like biscuits.
Completely irrelevant to this article, but I just love the fact that chocolate cake is tax exempt in Britain.

 The new wheelsize is coming boys! No more 29". No more 27.5. No more 26" (yes #26isdead)

25.5". Super light. Very playful. Superb handling. Coming January 2018. Also 25.5" will only be compatible with 145x12.5 half-boost hubs and the new PF69.5 bottom bracket

 Every nation in the first world is broke . And not just by a little unfunded liabilities total over 350 trillion world wide. If we give these fools even a nickel they will use it to help borrow a dollar . Total liquid cash on the whole earth is about 13 to 14 trillion. Government can never make good on any promise that involves your money.

 As someone who lives and commutes in Vancouver and has ridden in Portland, a $15 one time tax on the purchase of a new bike is not that much to help maintain and create cycling infrastructure. Oregon has fantastic cycling infrastructure. If you're not paying any sales tax, it is literally less than pretty much any amount of sales tax in Canada on a bike over $200. And that money isn't earmarked for anything.
If I lived in an area where I didn't have to pay a tax for something of course I would resist it, but realize what you have and if that's what it's going to take to maintain it, then be open minded about it.

 Oregon: We just hooked every new bike owner for $15 to spend on whatever we want.

California: Hold my Gluten-Free, Vegan, Kombucha

 everyone needs to read this... momentummag.com/free-rider-myth

“Bikes don’t pay for the roads.” You see it again and again. It appears on editorial pages, in blog comments, and shouted from car windows, often accompanied by the accusation: “Freeloader!” or something ruder.

The bicycle freeloader myth is a strong and pervasive economic belief. It’s implied in rules that require cyclists to stay off certain roads, or ride in a manner that does not affect car traffic. And it’s enforced through media headlines, police standards, and the behavior and discourse of cycling advocates and detractors alike.

But is it true?

When you take a trip on a bicycle, you do not pay for gas, and thus you pay no gas tax. You do not stop and pay tolls (and you are generally not allowed on toll roads). You do not pay a license or registration fee, part of which goes toward paving, maintaining, and policing the roads you ride on. Most car insurance companies do not cover bicyclists, so often you do not pay for that either. And you do not pay for parking. No doubt this all seems terribly unfair.

Of course, though there are many people out there who solely get around carfree, chances are good that any given person out riding a bicycle on the road also owns a car, or rents one from time to time. When they do so, they pay all the same fees, fines, and taxes as an everyday motorist does, and just as grudgingly.

But here’s the thing: Cars don’t pay for roads, either.

The idea that roads are funded by user fees paid by people who drive is one of the great myths that buttresses our entire way of life. While the veneer on that myth has been crumbling for some time, we have only recently been forced to begin to look hard at it. And the difference between riding a bicycle and driving a car is surprisingly vast – but not in the way most of us imagine.

What if I told you that by driving a car you become a freeloader, a drain on the economy? That people who bicycle instead are subsidizing a road system that they are largely not welcome on? In order to break even on the cost of roads and pay for every driver who uses them each year, we would need 54% of commuters using a bicycle as their sole means of transportation.

It’s not great news for most people. After all, driving a car is extremely expensive; and if you live in the US a car may be your best bet or only way to get to work and otherwise go about your life. Unfortunately, it is also true. Driving is one of the most heavily subsidized things we do on a daily basis.

Cars pay for about half of the cost of our roads, all told. That’s it. Half.

So where does the rest of the funding come from for all that asphalt? We all pay it – whether or not we drive.

Most of what we pay for the roads is not paid directly, but through our taxes. Every time we pay sales tax on a purchase, property tax on our homes (directly, or indirectly through our rent), or income tax on what we earn, a portion of that goes directly into our transportation system.

A portion of all these taxes are paid into a general fund, which is where most transportation money comes from. But the real costs of building roads end up being much higher over the years than what the budget can afford. A growing amount of road costs are paid for with borrowed money. We must eventually pay off these loans through our taxes, with interest that can amount to two, three, or more times the original cost of the project.

Worse, this funding gap increases every year. With the economy dragging, we drive less, and as fuel and material costs rise, construction grows more expensive.

Roads are enormously expensive to build and maintain. If you look only at the highway system, the user fees paid by drivers come much closer to paying for them than half, though the system still operates at a loss. But if you look at local roads, on which most of our daily travel happens, the gap is even wider. The cost to maintain local roads is, on average, more than 6 cents per mile for each car each year. How much of this do drivers actually pay? Less than a penny. What does this mean for bicycling? While people do not pay to ride bicycles on the road, bicycling also costs almost nothing – less than 1% of money spent on transportation infrastructure goes to anything bike-related, and bicycles do not contribute significantly to other road-related expenses like potholes, crashes, or congestion.

People who ride bicycles also pay taxes, which means they often pay more into the road system than they cost it. By one estimate, a carfree cyclist would overpay by an average of $250 a year – a few dollars more than the amount the average driver underpays. While cyclists represent all income levels more or less equally, the half who ride for transportation alone and do not own cars are on the lower end of the income spectrum. For them this is the very definition of a regressive tax – like the lottery, a program by which the poor subsidize the better-off.

By that measure, to pay for the cost of keeping one driver on the road, you need someone else who is not driving – that is, paying taxes but putting minimal wear and tear on the system. But two thirds of people in the US drive and most of the rest travel in cars and on buses as passengers. It’s a recipe for debt, yet there is a constant demand for more roads to be built so that more of us can drive farther and more often.

Despite a growing number of bicycles on the roads, there are not nearly enough to balance out this equation. But even if motorists were to double the fees they pay – and if those fees were indexed to inflation – it would still not be enough. Our road system is in bad shape, and we have not been able to spend nearly enough on it in the last decade to keep it even in minimally good working order.

That’s just the beginning of the story, though. Roads, economically unsustainable in their own right, result in towering externalities, costs or benefits attributed and paid for elsewhere, indirectly. When you take these costs into account – from health to safety to local economies to global energy – by the most conservative estimate, the cost to keep each car on the road is 30 times the cost of each bicycle.

Yet not a month goes by without some clever politician deciding that the best way out of our transportation funding crisis is to license and register bicyclists. Every year it is up to weary bicycle advocates to do the math once again to show that there is no way for such a scheme to break even on its administrative costs, never mind the cost of accommodating a sudden increase in cars on the road and passengers on transit.

The humble bicycle, long a scapegoat, may yet prove our salvation from a transportation system running at a deficit. This is not so far-fetched as it may seem at first glance.

Take Copenhagen, where forty years ago the incursion of cars and roads looked very similar to that in today’s US cities. But today, 84% of the city’s residents regularly ride bicycles. Each mile traveled on a bike earns the city, by one analysis, 42 cents. That same mile driven in a car costs the city 20 cents. Bicycling rates there have begun to decline in recent years, and city leaders are scrambling to make bikeways more comfortable and convenient. They know they can’t afford not to.

In the US, we can’t afford not to either, but it’s harder for us to see – bicycling hasn’t grown into normalcy in the same way. But when you consider that almost 70% of our car trips are under two miles – a forty minute walk or a twelve minute bicycle ride – change seems more feasible. More than two thirds of people in the US say that they wish they bicycled more often, and an increasing number are doing so. The barriers are real, but can be overcome cheaply and quickly. And the benefits multiply and spread into every aspect of our economy and our lives.

 So America is now taxing bicycles as a use of transport? Only in a country where there is huge profit in keeping you sick and where climate change is met with government level denial would they want to charge people to use a push bike as transport.

Wouldnt it be more sensible to give a small tax relief on commuting cycles below a certain value (above a certain level they are just a luxury good) to encourage people to ride to work and also provide updated infastructure at no cost to the cyclist.

On a slightly different note - I wonder how bat-shit mental people in the USA will go when the reality that you wont be able to get a new petrol/diesel car 30 years from now hits?

 This is idiocy. Auto drivers don't pay enough to subsidize their roads and infrastructure and the associated costs from our car dependency are staggering. Cycling should be an obvious alternative and free from all taxation and in fact subsidized. The reason cycling is a default form of public transport in Holland and Denmark is because there is safe infrastructure that separates bikes from autos. This costs money but our default auto infrastructure which no one questions is orders of magnitude more expensive.

 I think most people are under the mistaken assumption that the gas tax funds all roads. IT DOESN'T. In my city, all CITY roads (ie the ones bikes ride on) are funded by sales tax. Sales tax is transportation-mode-agnostic. Bicyclists are as likely to pay $x in sales tax as are car drivers.

In other words, the people who currently put almost all of the wear and tear on the roads we ride on are currently paying the SAME AMOUNT as the people who hardly put any wear and tear on them (us bicyclists). Check out your city's annual paving budget and tell me what that means to you. Hint: it's in the millions.

Cyclists are ALREADY paying an unfair share for the roads we ride on, it's not the other way around.

 A basic economist principle is to tax things you don't want and don't tax the things you do want. . . Fuck oregon.

 "How often do we fly the "Share the Road" flag without any consideration for sharing the costs to maintain them?"

1. Mountain bikes, by definition, do not need maintained roads to ride, so this is irrelevant on pinkbike.
2. Drivers don't share the road very well anyways, so why does it matter?
3. Bikes aren't even allowed on highways.
4. How many people who commute on bikes ACTUALLY don't drive cars as well?
5. If anything, bicycles should have tax credits, not tax deductions. What tf kind of incentive is this shit?

 What about those greedy pedestrians??? Where's the shoe tax?

I hate politicians. Who else gets paid to sit around and dream up ways to make things worse?

 Just another thought - In the US you can pass a law taxing the bicycle as a form of transport (something that helps promote fitness, reduces the wear on road surfaces and is basically carbon neutral with the exception of its manufacturing / sale) but you cant manage to put any kind of legislation in place regarding the absolute shite you feed yourselves (junk food tax, harmful chemicals in your food banned elsewhere) and the ability for any old turd to purchase a guy and shoot somebody else, regardless of the persons mental state.

Seems there is a little more power in place in the food / gun / church lobbys than the cyclists, eh?

 Taxation is theft.

 They just increased my property tax by 50% and car registration 300%. Funny how my neighborhood has thousands of million dollar homes that have extremely high property tax and they still complaining they need more money. Government needs to be more creative on generating income, not just easy way out and tax. Build something, sell some, make something people will want to buy.

 $15 isn't much, but the government keep inching up income, property, sales taxes, registration fees exc.. and the money never goes where it's suppose to. A lot of time they use the money for more code enforcement ( tickets ) to generate more revenue. Government is sucking people dry slowly but surely under the promise of improvement.

 Its true, bikes account for a negligible amount of the wear on roads and the needed maintenance. However, so much of our streets in North America are in need of costly updates for cycling infrastructure. This $15 tax could help cycling infrastructure projects gain more validity and political backing when cyclists are directly contributing over a million a year to the state’s transportation budget. Might be a small price to pay to give transportation planners and engineers the ammunition they need to make cities more bikeable.

 I'm honestly pretty down with this. I frequently hear people moaning about all the cyclists in the middle of the road who "Don't even have to pay gas taxes or register their bikes blah blah blah!" (As if 99% of people who bike don't also own cars...) If we could shut those people up, that would be great in my opinion.

 I'll have to scratch bikes off the list of things worth driving the hour to Oregon to buy.

 It's a tax to fund our broke ass state. They are trying to find ways to pay the retired government employees. Meanwhile
Walmart and such sells their crap and no tax! If they just taxed bikes below $200 they would collect a lot more money.
But we don't want to cut into Big box stores profit, let's just cut
into bike retailers profit some more. Disgusting display I can't even put into words how "uncool" Oregon has become. I used to be proud to live here... No more..

 The law is written in wheel size, not tire size, so even 29ers are tax exempt.

"29er rims have a diameter of approximately 622 millimeters (24.5 in) and the average 29" mountain bike tire is (in ISO notation) 59-622 - corresponding to an outside diameter of about 29.15 inches (740 mm)."

 Not that Hawaiians are usually considered to be trend setters, but we've been doing this forever. I think in the late 1990's it went from a biannual thing to a one time, $15 fee for 20" and up. It's works well, look how wonderful our infrastructure is. Sigh.

 This will create a disincentive to purchase a bike for some consumers. It just HAPPENS to be threshold that WalMart falls under for their bike prices?
Shocking.

 In Canada, if you live/ride in a city your property taxes pay for a huge part of road upkeep. Income tax covers a gigantic piece of the provincial/federal cost. Sure we don't use an gasoline and pay the gas tax in this one instance, but (1) most of us still have cars and drive regularly, (2) If you're riding a 3/4/5-grand-plus bike odds are you pay more income tax than a lot of people, and (3) bikes don't do any damage to roads the way heavy cars and trucks do. Meanwhile we relieve traffic congestion, make cities more vibrant and accessible and improve our health at no cost to the government.

So before you tell me to pay my fair share for the privilege to ride my bike on a road why don't you raise the sin tax on tobacco once again or jack me another nickle on a six-pack.

 Read up on the Pittman Robertson act. It could be much worse for bikers than this. This isn't a terrible idea if the money were directed towards infastructure for the bikes intended use (roads for road bikes, trails for mountain bikes). Oregon will spend the vast majority of this money to its former employees though through PERS...

 That's what happens when liberals run things, wouldn't live there, too many wackos.

 Indiana residents already pay (or are supposed to pay) $20 per year to register mountain bikes ridden on State Park, State Forest, and National Forest Trails (the vast majority of trails in the state). So far this seems to have gone more towards plugging deficit holes, and less towards any increased support of soft surface trail building and maintenance. (with one notable exception- the forest service does now cut downed trees of State Forest trails... eventually)

On a lighter note, the Huffy Carnage 3.0 ... a bike whose very name describes what will happen to the rider if the bike is used on real MTB trails.

 This is just more bullish** and you all know it.

Solution? Drive to a nearby state and buy your bike there. F*** Oregon. same with California. Absolute worst politicians in the entire country. We all know that the $$$ from this will NEVER ever be put into trails, or multi use trails, or whatever else they say it will be put in for. It's going to go into Pensions that the stupid state can't afford to fund. Downrate me all you want but thats the truth. We all know how "straight" politicians are. Anyone that believes this will go to "what its intended" has wool over their eyes, and is just as corrupt as the POS politicians they elected into those offices.

I feel bad for those of you who live up there.

 As a former 40 year resident of Oregon I feel very comfortable saying the following:
The government of the State of Oregon is corrupt and dysfunctional. The former governor resigned in disgrace when it was discovered that his GF was "consulting" on "solar energy" projects. The history of Mayors in Portland is a colorful list of WTF.

This is just a clumsy attempt to increase taxes. Period. Years ago they instituted a "Snow Park Permit" to park at ski resorts that the state plowed. Fair enough. And the fee was designed to collect the actual cost. Build facilities bicyclists want and charge to use them? Not a problem.

But remember that "bike lanes" are built for car drivers. I can ride on the road without any problem. I can't keep track of the number of times people pass me and cut me off when I am riding at or above the speed limit.

The good news is that the law puts this tax on bicycles with "wheels" 26 inches or greater in diameter. I have a lot of bicycles, and not a one of them has a WHEEL that large. A 29'er is normally about 25 inches in diameter. If I was still living there it would not apply to me because I don't but bicycles. I buy frames, forks, wheels, brakes... Yup, the folks who wrote that tax were not very bright.

 I live in Portland and the tax is bullshit. It's to appease all the people who cry foul that bikes "don't pay their fair share!". This is primarily driven by complaining from Portland areas constituents who are upset that there are bike lanes. They never take into account that the vast majority of us own cars and already pay our share. I also ride the bus, which doesn't contribute anything towards road repair. The entire transportation package that was passed will pour money into widening roads in the Portland area in hopes of reducing congestion (which it won't). The only upside is that they are also looking at putting tolls into the city, which will cut traffic and raise money. The reality is that our city has a rep as a bike town, and it's not true and is undeserved. I've lived in several cities in Oregon and this is the least bike friendly place I've lived.

 So let's see how well Oregon is doing...More tax revenue than ever due to marijuana legalization, multiple counties passing levies on fuel (for roads) and we still need more money!!! They're like a bunch of snot nosed, whiny, little children who've spent all of their allowance on candy, complaining that they need more money. Insolent Cheats and liars, the whole lot of them!!!
Honestly, we all can say "It's only 15 bucks" , but we also know that nothing will change and they'll come back to us again trying to pick our pockets, because it's never enough if you can't spend what you have wisely.

 Whats funny is that it probably won't even be used for anything bike related #oregondeclaresbankruptcy

 Always new taxes.... never more efficient use of existing taxes. I wonder what the total taxpayer bill is for all the politicians and their pensions....

 Where's the pink bike poll on mountain bikers' political standings?

 I just rode in Oregon for the first time this last weekend, I live in Nevada, and honestly, I'd send in 15 bucks to ensure that the roads are maintained to get to the trails up there. That place is incredible. And if it makes the roads safer for folks roaming through town checking out the breweries and whatnot, I'm on board.

 And it's begun......
Coming up next. "The Shoe Tax"

 People are up in arms over a sales tax that amounts to .03% on a $5000 bike and goes towards improving cycling infrastructure? In BC we pay 5% federal Goods and Services Tax and it could and does go absolutely anywhere. That's with a an exemption of the 7% Provincial Sales Tax too, which many retailers charge anyway and pocket.

Cry me a river.

 I am appalled to find this sentiment proliferated in a pinkbike article, "How often do we fly the "Share the Road" flag without any consideration for sharing the costs to maintain them?" And "that cyclists are finally raising money instead of awareness" This is the same kind of rhetoric screamed right after having a driver who's late for work drive down the bike lane "cause bikes don't pay for the roads, roads are for cars"

You should really do some research before you ignorantly pop off like that; and realize the transportation fund is paid for not only by automobiles and gas tax'/ but also by other taxpayer funding, which we are already paying into with our tax dollars, fedral funding, and efforts to NOT be part of the problem of traffic, emmisons, dangerous driving, parking etc. by using a humble and sustainable alternative, the bike.

Furthermore, your enphacis on directing tax dollars towards building mountain bike trails is illcontrived. If there is anywhere such levied funds should be spend it is clearly on making our state safer and more accessible for bicyclist; rather than building some (lame) public trails for the affluent mountain bikers to ride.

once again RC, your out of line.

 It isn't that big of deal but it seems silly to tax mountain bikes to build paved paths and bike lanes that mountain bikers will never ride.

 I don't know if id be too happy to pay a tax to pave my favorite bike trail...

 Money never goes where it's supposed to....

 Taxation is theft.

 At first i was a bit angry. Taxing bikes?
I see your spin on the situation.
It gives people who ride to work or for recreation more leverage for advocacy.
My gas pays for these roads is innacurate as all tax monies go into the general coffiers .
The 15$ tax gives us legitamacy to share the road /trails.

 I have mixed feelings about this, but one positive that I do see is that now that there is a bicycle tax bicyclist will have much more political leverage to shape new road projects in favor of bicycles.

 Good job commie fags

 Worst. Tax. Ever. Won't. Fix. Shit.

 My town or village whatever you want to call it, in the Chicago suburbs has a 9 % sales tax on everything. Most towns around me, and Chicago, the rate is 10 % or higher, some go up to 11 % sales tax. Lets add in 5 % income tax to the state, and the highest gas taxes in the nation. Don't get me started on my blisteringly high property taxes. Any wonder why people voted for the Trumpster?

 doesnt this aid the death blow to the local retailers... insane and sad, in the end, these types of taxes are about killing independent small business

 About damn time cyclists started paying for all the damage and stress placed on paved infrastructure! I'll bet the average bridge has a whole 30 seconds removed from its lifespan by the sheer number of bikes that use it...at the end of the day it's 15 bucks, but their justification is unnecessary and probably unfounded. Whatever.

 The tax is BS, and so is this article. New trails are not built with taxes or leverage of said taxes. They are built by hard working people who likely *drove* to the trail. There are more trails in Oregon that one person can ride in a lifetime, and more are being built every day. Good luck out there.

 Can I remind the author that most of us who ride bikes also own/insure a vehicle? I'm a little tired of the argument that cyclists need to share the costs of maintaining the roads - you truly mean cyclists need to pay to maintain the road twice...

"without any consideration for sharing the costs to maintain them"

@RichardCunningham

 Eff that! Getting taxed twice for road use. Cyclist should get a tax break for not flooding the atmosphere with hundreds of pounds of co2. ill raise the bet. i dont want to pay taxes for schools. I dont have kids.

 This is such bullshit. I've had this argument used against me too by a former co-worker, "Well, you're using the road but not paying any taxes." Helllloooooo, I do have two vehicles, and have a job; therefore, I *have* paid my taxes to use those roads. Whether I'm behind the wheel or in the saddle, it doesn't matter.

 Stupid idea, not surprised. I feel that the author is giving a reach-around to the idea of taxes.

 Or just sell the bike with 20" wheels and offer a free trade up to the proper wheels.

 Building your own bike is getting even cheaper!

 E-bikes get taxed at 0.5% of their sale price which puts the break-even at $3000 with respect to bicycles. I bet that's gonna have some interesting unintended consequences once enough people figure it out.

 Piss on my head and tell me it's raining is all that's going on!

 Good idea but just further drives people to buy online, hurting the local economy.

 lets not all forget this is a flat fee tax of $15. This is still significantly less than a sales tax we see in most states. crossing my fingers some of this cash is kicked down to help fund the local trail systems :-)

 $15 a bike, to cover the sales mans hourly minimum wage. taxes are hip. atleast, that's what their voting record says

 If the tax bothers you that bad just buy a used bike private party. It's worked great for me so far. Nearly all my bike purchases have been used.

 Good thing I bought my new bike in PDX a month ago. Although even with the tax it's still way cheaper than buying a bike in WA or other surrounding state.

 If you are a serious cyclist in Oregon, you should be happy to spend $15 to better your riding experience. As for the rest of the bill it looks as though residents are more up in arms about the taxes as a whole - especially if they didn't pay many to start with.

 I'm okay with this. I take pride in paying my taxes, not like the draft dodging commie a bunch of idiots elected this go-round.

 To pay for the new abortion law... what a mess the US is.

 More mountain bike trails with that tax money. Push it! E bikes should be taxed. 20 bucks not 15. If you make enough money to buy an E bike and are too lazy to climb then pay the extra tax! Liberals are the devil!!!

 If the bicycle tax is actually used to improve bicycle paths, off-road trails etc I'm ok with it. Hell if my tax dollars actually did something useful for ME, I'm ok with them.

 And once again another pinbike thread has been an amazing piece of entertainment whilst unleashing the foulness from bowels. Good job everyone!

 One plus: With E-bikes getting taxed at 50% hopefully there will be less of them

 Let's be honest, bikes over $200 are a luxury item. If your bicycle is purely for transportation you'll largely be unaffected by this tax unless you're too good for a Walmart bike. I love bicycling, I will happily admit that it's a ridiculously expensive hobby, which is why I primarily but used gear. If you can afford to spend more than $200 on a bike you can afford a $15 tax. Here in VA I'd be out significantly more than that for a middle of the road $2,500 bicycle with out current tax structure and I have no idea how those funds are used. If I knew that tax money went directly to better biking infrastructure in my local cities and towns, I'd be thrilled. Granted, I'd be happier if it went to trail work and land access, but if the local roads get safer for nerdy roadies, I'm ok with that, too.

 This money will be reallocated to give the state legislators a big fat raise. It's hard work coming up with new ways to steel money out of peoples pockets and call it a tax.

 Way to go Oregon!

 I want a huffy carnage!

 And Oregon is a BLUE state!

 Please don't move here, do you even vote?

 Buy online and ship to Oregon. make sure you buy from a free shipping website.

 Tax? I buy individual bike components and assemble them into a bike.

 I wonder if online retailers will get around the tax seems like it will affect lbs the most

 Because bixe are such a strain on transport infrastructure. Mountain bixe doubley so

 Two words. BLOW-ME! Fuckin' red tape machine.

 Sales will go down in Oregon and peeps will buy out of state or internet like a ton of folks do now.

 New wheel size 25.9 (tax free size)

 I don't live in Oregon, but I'd be happy to pay $15 every 3-5 years to ensure good pathways throughout the city.

 5.3 billion? over how many years? I think you may have meant million.

 Hahahaha... hahahahahahah....wtf.

 We need a FAT tax.

 Awe....pinkbook is growing it's roots ....

 Of course shes happy to sign the bill. Her pockets get lined with cash...

 its all over now

 Grow some balls and tax gas more. We all need a firm kick in the ass to use less of that crap

 na

 The planet's dying, better tax 0 emmison transportation! (Not that it's actually that big of a deal, not a huge tax)