Tax reform, highway funding top TIA Lobby Day issues

WASHINGTON (Feb. 26, 2015) — Highway funding, tax reform and tire registration were the big issues tire dealers, repair shop owners and association officials discussed with Capitol Hill staffers during the Tire Industry Association's Federal Lobby Day Feb. 5.

Approximately 55 representatives of the tire retailing and auto repair industries participated in the event, which began with speeches from current and former members of Congress and progressed to one-on-one meetings with key staff persons in the offices of several top Washington lawmakers.

With the Highway Trust Fund set to run out of money in May, passage of a multiyear transportation funding bill was the main issue TIA advanced during Federal Lobby Day. What TIA did not want to see in a transportation funding package was as important a part of the discussions as what it did.

TIA especially does not want any highway funding option that would reinstate the federal excise taxes on passenger tires and tread rubber, said TIA Executive Vice President Roy Littlefield III in a position paper he wrote for Federal Lobby Day.

Both taxes, Mr. Littlefield said, were repealed in the Surface Transportation Act of 1982.

TIA also does not want to see a national weight-distance tax on truckers, higher tolls, further privatization of roads and highways or Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) charges, according to Mr. Littlefield. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Bill Shuster, R-Pa., has already asserted his opposition to the most often discussed option, an increase in the motor fuels tax, Mr. Littlefield said.

“TIA is taking two strong and specific positions,” he said. “First, eliminate diversion. We are approaching 50 percent of the funds collected for the Highway Trust Fund diverted for non-highway purposes. Second, engage creatively in future highway funding.”

TIA was an early and enthusiastic supporter of the Partnership to Rebuild America Act sponsored in the last Congress by Rep. John Delaney, D-Md. The bill had some 75 co-sponsors in the House, and Mr. Delaney plans to reintroduce it this year.

The legislation would establish a $50 billion American Infrastructure Fund through the Treasury Department, with leveraged financing of up to $750 billion for state and local governments to fund infrastructure projects.

The bill also would provide tax incentives for multinational corporations to move an estimated $2 trillion in offshore profits back to the U.S. in return for using some of the collected taxes to repair the nation's infrastructure. That would provide some $150 billion to $200 billion to the Highway Trust Fund over six years, Mr. Delaney said in his speech at Federal Lobby Day.

“This has a very good chance of getting done,” Mr. Delaney said of his legislation. He noted that President Obama used the bill's tax reform proposals in his administration's new infrastructure proposals.

“His tax rates are higher, though,” Mr. Delaney said of Mr. Obama's proposal.

Besides transportation funding, TIA members lobbied against reinstatement of mandatory tire registration, which also was repealed in the Surface Transportation Act of 1982.