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Heritage
Network
The Budget
Deal's Sneaky
Tax Increases
Rob Bluey
December 13, 2013
The
congressional budget
deal includes some “user fees.”
For
the Washington
establishment, that’s apparently the politically correct way of telling
Americans they’ll be paying more to the federal government. For the
rest of us,
it’s a tax increase.
The
Ryan-Murray budget
deal, which passed the House on a 332-94 vote, includes a number of
“fee”
increases. One would make flying more expensive. Travelers are
currently
charged $2.50 per flight under the Transportation Security
Administration’s
airline security “fee.” Under the budget deal, that would increase to
$5.60 per
flight or $11.20 for a round-trip ticket.
Supporters
of the deal are
claiming this isn’t a tax increase—but take a look at your airline
receipt. The
airline security charge is just one of the taxes you’ll see. According
to Delta
Airlines, there’s also the Domestic Transportation Tax (7.5 percent),
Travel
Facilities Tax ($8.40), and U.S. International Transportation Tax
($17.20).
These are all considered taxes.
When
asked if the “user
fees” were a code name for a tax increase, Representative Tom
McClintock (R-CA)
explained it this way: “I happen to believe once government spends a
dollar
they have decided to tax that dollar. The only question is when and by
what
means.”
And
in the case of this
airline security fee increase, the money isn’t even going back to the
TSA to
fund or improve security. Instead, as Heritage’s Cassandra Lucaccioni
explained, “it will be deposited annually into a general fund of the
Treasury.”
Not
all government user
fees are problematic. If they’re used to provide services to distinct
groups of
individuals or specific businesses or industries, they might make
sense. That’s
not what’s happening here.
“If
a higher fee does not
directly cover the cost of a government service and instead goes to pay
for
more spending, then it is akin to a tax increase,” said Curtis Dubay,
Heritage’s senior tax policy analyst. “The budget deal uses the higher
fees to
cover the cost of more spending; hence it is essentially a tax hike.”
Taxpayers
are tired of
Washington’s gimmicks and games—and conservatives on Capitol Hill
shouldn’t
fall for this sneaky wordplay. The $63 billion spending hike in the
Ryan-Murray
budget has to come from somewhere.
Only
in Washington could
something like this fly. The American people shouldn’t buy it—or, in
this case,
pay for it.
Read
this article with
links, plus others at Heritage Network
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