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Via Todd Litman of the  Victoria Transport Policy Institute, two interesting studies on how drivers have reacted to the rising cost of taking to the roads. First up,  a study (pdf link) that used 2.1 million odometer readings in California to explore the relationship between fuel prices and driving.   From the abstract: The primary empirical result is a medium-term estimate of the utilization elasticity of driving—the elasticity of vehicle-miles-traveled...

Efforts to close a tax loophole for Washington’s largest greenhouse gas polluter got a second life in the Legislature today. Bills to eliminate a sales tax exemption on coal burned at the Centralia power plant didn’t go anywhere this session. But the Senate budget proposed today would effectively end the tax subsidy for the state’s only coal-fired power plant, raising about $4 million in new revenue each year. (To find...

Last week, Washington Governor Christine Gregoire came out crusading for closing tax loopholes to to shore up the state’s crumbling budget. Here are some things that made her list: sellers of gold bullion, cattle operations, free-riding banks, out-of-state businesses, chili canners masquerading as meat processors and corporate board members collecting big checks. Here’s one that didn’t: a $4 million annual sales tax exemption on out-of-state coal burned at TransAlta’s Centralia...

Do people notice small changes in gas prices? I’ve been wondering about this lately—which gave me an excuse to download historical gas price data—and I learned a couple of things in the process. Consider: Gas prices changed by 7 cents per week, on average, during 2008 and 2009. Sometimes prices went up and sometimes they went down, but they rarely stayed constant. What’s more, the price changed by very different amounts each...

In what would be easily the world’s biggest carbon tax shift, French President Sarkozy has begun advocating for robust carbon tax coupled with rebates or tax reductions: The tax would be initially based on the market price for carbon dioxide emissions permits, which is now euro17 ($24.74) per ton of carbon dioxide, Sarkozy said. At that level, the government expects to raise euro3 billion, which will be entirely returned to...

Throughout Cascadia—at the city, state, and provincial level—governments are figuring out ways to promote energy efficiency through financial incentives. Most of this has focused on financial tools that would use public dollars for low-interest loans to motivate home and business owners to make capital improvements to save energy. One such program in Oregon, the Business Energy Tax Credit (BETC or ‘Betsy’), has by most measures been a great success. A...

Last week, BC’s New Democratic Party put a misleading attack on the province’s world-leading carbon tax shift at the center of its long-shot campaign to regain control of the province’s government in the May 12 elections. The campaign officially kicked off today. As I said in October, I hope this argument won’t work.  The NDP—a party Sightline proudly advised and collaborated with during its last term in power—is playing fast...

With the US economy in the tank, could it possibly make sense to increase the tax burden? An increase in the state gas tax just might a win-win—boosting the economy while benefiting the environment.  Several states—including Oregon, California, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Illinois—are considering gas tax increases.  Just consider some of the possible benefits: Less pollution. Last year, we saw that higher gas prices encourage people to drive less, which means...

Washington’s finances are a mess. Very likely, the state needs both spending cuts and a revenue infusion. And we need to do something quick. So I say, let’s go ahead and eliminate tax credits for working families. Let’s delete the paid family leave benefits. After all, those things don’t affect the ordinary people of Washington. But whatever we do, we must never close the tax loophole on sales of tangible personal property...

An update on this. Last week’s national elections in Canada were bad, but not horrible, news for supporters of carbon tax shifting. And they give me a little comfort about the provincial carbon tax shift already in place. To review for our American readers, Stephane Dion, leader of the center-left federal Liberal Party (not the same political hue as the provincial Liberals), ran on a platform that included a proposal...