Transportation taxes: Here's how much you already pay

As Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels asks voters to spend more money on city roads, and King County Executive Ron Sims promotes a countywide sales-tax boost for more buses, the annual local tax bill for transportation already exceeds $800 per adult.

The dollars are collected in so many ways — state and federal gas taxes, sales taxes, car-tab taxes, property taxes, business taxes, real-estate tax — that the average person doesn't know the bottom line.

A Seattle Times review of major transportation taxes estimates that agencies collected an average of $843 per adult in urban areas of King County, including Seattle, last year. The figure for Seattle residents is $881. Roughly half the money went to transit, and half to roads.

In addition to this year's proposals by Nickels and Sims, another pair of multibillion-dollar packages — for Sound Transit and regional highways — appear headed toward the ballot next year.

If all four measures win, the area's transportation investment likely would exceed $1,000 per adult in both Seattle and its suburbs.

Adding it up

Some taxes are more apparent than others.

• Car-tab taxes — a $30 state fee, a Sound Transit tax and another (which expires June 30) to retire debt on the defunct Seattle Monorail Project — show up as an annual itemized bill in the mail.

• Gas taxes are paid at the pump throughout the year, a few dollars at a time. In July, the state tax of 31 cents a gallon will increase to 34 cents, on top of the federal tax of 18.4 cents a gallon. Voters last fall rejected a gas-tax rollback.

• Sales taxes for Sound Transit and Metro are less conspicuous. In King County, they add 1.2 percent to the price of a television, a pair of jeans, a hammer.

Transit agencies get about $355 per adult in sales tax yearly, a sizable figure but less than one-seventh of what the full 8.8 percent sales tax generates for state and local government.

Your actual costs may vary, depending on how much you drive, how much you spend and where you live.

A motorist who travels 12,000 miles a year, for instance, in a car getting 22 miles per gallon would pay $100 to the federal government and $169 to the state in gas taxes.

Some areas outside city limits — such as White Center south of Seattle, and Fairwood south of Renton — carry an extra load. They pay for urban Sound Transit service, plus a property tax for outlying county roads, at a higher cost than their city neighbors pay for their streets.

In Snohomish County, the combined transportation taxes per adult average more than $700 for Everett and other cities in Sound Transit's urban-service territory.

The Times divided 2005 transportation-tax revenues — local, state and federal — by an estimated number of adults in various taxing zones, and adjusted for relatively low car ownership in Seattle. Businesses pay about a third of the sales taxes and big trucks account for one-tenth of gas taxes.

On top of the major taxes, agencies draw upon transit fares, traffic fines, land-development fees and bond sales. Put it all together, and the grand total for King, Pierce and Snohomish counties in 2003 was $3.4 billion, according to the Puget Sound Regional Council.

Cavalcade of requests

Why so many requests at once?

For starters, roadways built in the 1950s and '60s are wearing out, or have been overwhelmed by growth in the motoring population. An example is the four-lane Highway 520 bridge across Lake Washington, which could require $3 billion for a six-lane replacement.

Seattle officials cite a $500 million maintenance backlog for aging roads and bridges. "The public understands the need," said Marianne Bichsel, spokeswoman for Nickels.

Elected officials say their budgets were undermined by Initiative 695, a Tim Eyman measure that chopped a big statewide car-tab tax to $30 seven years ago. Agencies have filled the gap with tax increases approved by voters or state legislators. Cities have also spent money that might otherwise go to parks, police, firefighting or social services.

A third reason is a lack of central coordination. In Snohomish, King and Pierce counties, at least seven public agencies operate highways, buses, ferries, trains, streetcars, van pools and Seattle's one-mile tourist monorail.

The Economist magazine claimed last year that Seattle has "probably the worst transport planning in North America." Local critics accuse agencies of pushing their own projects, ignoring cumulative costs and regional priorities.

Four campaigns

Voters are left to sift through multiple plans:

• Nickels' $1.8 billion, 20-year program, "Bridging the Gap," which he announced Monday, would raise property taxes $45 per $100,000 of assessed value next year. There would also be an annual business tax of $25 per full-time employee, and a 10 percent tax on commercial parking-lot fees.

• The county's "Transit Now" measure would raise Metro's sales tax, currently 80 cents on a $100 purchase, by another dime.

• A $7 billion highway measure, being written by three county councils for next year, would add a car-tab tax of $60 per $10,000 in vehicle value, plus a dime of sales-tax per $100 purchase.

• Sound Transit's upcoming "ST2" package could pay for light-rail extensions to Bellevue, Northgate and south of Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, through a sales-tax increase of up to 50 cents per $100 purchase.

To avert a "roads-vs.-transit" fight, state lawmakers have required the highway and Sound Transit measures to pass together, or they both fail.

As they write final plans, officials will count on opinion surveys and public forums to tell them how much money they can seek without triggering so-called taxpayer fatigue.

"You decide by asking whether you think people will feel the next project you put on the list still allows the camel to carry the load," said state transportation Secretary Doug MacDonald.

Sims called voter fatigue more of a political theory than a reality. The area's highly educated voters will think for themselves about each proposal's merits, he said last month. "We know the one-tenth of a percent sales tax for Metro Transit, that's popular under any scenario."

Nickels supports all four ballot measures. It would be irresponsible for any mayor to let the city's bridges and roads deteriorate, to defer to Sound Transit and highways, said Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis. "None of the other ballot measures will address Seattle's serious transportation needs," Ceis said.

"We have no choice."

News researcher Gene Balk and staff reporter Keith Ervin contributed to this report.

Mike Lindblom: 206-515-5631 or mlindblom@seattletimes.com