The Equity Impacts of California's County Transportation Sales Taxes

As state and federal fuel tax revenues for transportation continue to decline in real dollar terms, financial responsibility has increasingly shifted to local governments. In California, 19 “self-help” counties have Local Option Sales Taxes (LOSTs) to fund transportation projects. While both fuel and sales taxes are considered “regressive” because lower income households tend to pay larger shares of their incomes on such taxes than higher income households, sales tax finance for transportation also means that light users of transportation systems tend to pay more per mile travelled than do heavy users of the system. The ultimate regressivity of LOSTs depends not only on who pays them, but also on how the revenues are spent. When projects and services are funded which benefit lower income households, LOSTs effectively become more progressive. Accordingly, this research will analyze both the collection of LOSTs in California as well as the expenditure of funds to determine how they affect low-income and minority travelers and communities. This project will also examine the processes by which the LOST expenditure plans were developed to analyze whether low income and minority groups participated in the formulation of the measures and low income and minority households voted for them.

• Record URL:
  • http://ucconnect.berkeley.edu/equity-impacts-californias-county-transportation-sales-taxes

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Completed
• Funding: $169270
• Contract Numbers:

  2016 - TO 042 - 65A0529

• Sponsor Organizations:

  California Department of Transportation

  1227 O Street
  Sacramento, CA  United States  95843

  Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology

  University Transportation Centers Program
  Department of Transportation
  Washington, DC  United States  20590
• Managing Organizations:

  University of California Center on Economic Competitiveness in Transportation (UCCONNECT)

  University of California, Berkeley
  Berkeley, CA  United States  94720-1782
• Performing Organizations:

  University of California, Los Angeles

  Los Angeles, CA  United States 
• Principal Investigators:

  Wachs, Martin

  Taylor, Brian

• Start Date: 20160501
• Expected Completion Date: 20170430
• Actual Completion Date: 0
• USDOT Program: University Transportation Centers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Construction projects; Economic impacts; Equity; Financing; Fuel taxes; Local government agencies; Sales tax; Transportation planning
• Geographic Terms: California
• Subject Areas: Finance; Highways; Planning and Forecasting; Society;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01628679
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: University of California Center on Economic Competitiveness in Transportation (UCCONNECT)
• Contract Numbers: 2016 - TO 042 - 65A0529
• Files: UTC, RIP, STATEDOT
• Created Date: Mar 8 2017 4:13PM