Taxing Foreigners Living Abroad

Taxing Foreigners Living Abroad BY DAVID LEVINSON “To improve the British economy, I’d tax all foreigners living abroad .” —Man in Bowler Hat from Monty Python’s Flying Circus W ill toll roads ever become the norm, leaving rates), movie theaters (the matinee show), and restaurants (the “free” roads a distant memory? Now that new early bird special). Giving discounts to travelers during the electronic toll-collection systems can collect fees uncongested off-peak hours should attract less opposition than from vehicles traveling at full speed, we must ask whether they an extra toll on peak-period travelers. Setting the right tolls, so inevitably will. People who believe technological developments that time-of-day pricing is efficient without being too complex, is compel institutional changes expect tolls will replace taxes in a challenging but surmountable problem. transportation finance. Those who believe institutional arrange- New or widened roads can be financed either from tolls or ments are independent of technological changes are dubious. from general revenue sources such as gas taxes. With completion Recent articles in A CCESS have explored some of these of the Interstate system, localities must bear a greater share of prospects. Kenneth Small maintains new technologies will new highway costs. But along with greater financial responsibil- encourage tolls, including tolls that vary by time-of-day and ity comes increased flexibility. While the federal government by volumes-of-traffic—congestion prices. Klein and Fielding prohibited tolls on newly constructed Interstate highways, no suggest that, by allowing single-occupant cars to save time by such prohibition exists on locally funded roads. Besides produc- using relatively uncongested high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) ing otherwise unavailable funds, toll financing ties use closely to lanes for a fee, lane-by-lane we could convert HOV lanes into payment, and thus sends influential signals to drivers about high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes. In contrast, Wachs argues that whether to drive or not. “the prospects for widespread adoption of congestion pricing are The toll roads that America use today have never been extremely limited” because only a small political constituency “free,” and so they’ve never faced the politically contentious (principally transportation economists and planners) favors such problem of conversion. The success of converting free roads to pricing. tolls depends in part on how government spends the new toll The debate revolves around three separate, but related, pro- revenue. Furthermore, while tolling may seem strange and new posals: converting existing fixed tolls into time-varying tolls, in a California that championed the freeway, it is one idea that building new toll lanes and roads, and charging tolls on currently moved from the East Coast westward. “free” roads, including converting HOV lanes into HOT lanes. Of course, just as there is no free lunch, there is no free way. Many different services already have prices that vary by The real issues are the directness of the charge and who pays time-of-day, including telephones (cheaper evening and weekend it. Directness depends on whether government collects ➢ David Levinson is a post-doctoral researcher at the Institute of Transportation Studies, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-1720 (dmlevins@uclink4.berkeley.edu). He received the Ph.D. degree in civil and environmental engineering at UC-Berkeley in June. A C C E S S