San Mateo County Rental Car Taxes Defeated at Ballot Box

A reader points us to two ballot initiatives hiking taxes on parking lots and rental cars in San Mateo County, California that failed on Tuesday. Measure Q would have imposed an 8% gross receipts tax on commercial parking facilities (San Francisco International Airport is located in San Mateo County), which failed by a vote of 47.9% to 52.1%. Measure R would have imposed a 2.5% gross receipts tax on rental cars, but failed 47.5% to 52.5%. The county hoped to use the $28 million raised by the taxes to close its budget shortfall.

Excise taxes like taxes on rental cars are increasingly used as a way to shift punitive tax burdens to non-constituents like tourists. This is dangerous because it allows people to consume more government than they are willing to pay for, and assume incorrectly that there is such a thing as a free lunch. If San Mateo County’s taxes aren’t enough to cover the spending San Mateo County citizens want, they should either be willing to raise broad-based taxes on everyone or cut spending.

After all, we’re all tourists to everyone else, and if everyone shifts huge taxes to tourists, we all pay in the end.