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Gas tax hits low-income hardest

Gov.Martin O'Malley's proposal to apply the sales tax to gasoline is both recession-inducing and, like the current gas tax, severely regressive. Gasoline is the lifeblood of our economy. To increase its cost is to increase the cost of earning a living, every bite of food we eat at home or in a restaurant, every item we buy, tourism, and the cost of every item manufactured in Maryland.

The effect of applying the sales tax to gasoline will be to slow the economy and slow job growth (other than the relatively few temporary jobs that would be created by new transportation projects). We hardly need to slow Maryland's economy by applying a tax that will discourage shopping, dining, travel and manufacturing.

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The current gasoline tax is already a highly regressive tax. For example, two workers earn $10 and $50 per hour after state and federal taxes. If both workers commute a total of 200 miles each week (very common in this megalopolis) using cars that get 25 miles per gallon and each works 50 weeks per year, they each pay $92 in gasoline tax now. The $10 per hour worker works 9.2 hours (more than a day) just to pay the gas tax required to earn his $10 per hour. In contrast, the $50 per hour worker works only 1.84 hours to pay the gas tax needed to earn his $50 per hour.

If, as The Sun indicates, the new tax would add 18 cents to the cost of a gallon of gasoline, then the $10 worker would then have to work an additional 7.20 hours to pay the gas tax needed to earn a living while the $50 worker would need to work only an additional 1.44 hours to earn his living.

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Once the new tax is implemented, the $10 worker would need to work 16.40 hours per day, more than two working days, to pay the gasoline tax needed to work while the $50 per hour worker would work only 3.28 hours, not even half of a day, to pay the new tax.

Good transportation benefits every citizen of Maryland directly or indirectly, not just those to who drive. Why are we not discussing what percentage increase in the income tax would achieve the needed funding? Instead, the governor is proposing to extend a tax that already harms those who earn the least and struggle the most.

Perhaps it's been too long since the governor pumped his own gas and paid the bill out of his after-tax income. But then he and his wife are among the high earners in Maryland who will work the fewest hours of pay this regressive tax.

Anita Heygster, Pasadena

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