Reprieve in the Works for Flexcar

When we first heard about the extra tax being levied on car-sharing companies like Flexcar in September, we were pretty incensed, as were many other one-car households. Sounds like the folks down in Oly may have actually heard our cries. The PI reports this morning that:

Lawmakers are realizing an inconvenient truth: It might take cash incentives to get people out of their cars. Incentive, in this case, will come in the form of a tax exemption or state grants and is intended to give car-share users reprieve from a car rental tax that was applied to all car-share programs in November.

Well thank goodness for that. As we said last fall, putting this tax on car-sharing companies made no sense because they're not rental companies (you have to be a member to use one of their cars) and they help reduce congestion and greenhouse gas emissions. Both items, last we checked, are high on the region's to-do list.

So now that everyone agrtees the tax is unfari, there's a debate between the legislature and the Governor about how to provide these "incentives." Either they'll create a tax break via legislation that will cost $318,000, or the Governor will insert a $225,000 grant into the budget which would be administered by the Commute Trip Reduction Board. How that grant would actually save Flexcar users money would be up to the board, according to Gregoire's spokesman, Aaron Toso.

Toso told us that the Governor would rather go the grant route during this year's short legislative session because she thinks it would be less likely to fail that way. He's probably right. We think that based on their track record last year, a bill to cut taxes could easily be derailed by Republicans or by scaredy-cat, super-majority-holding Dems facing re-election.

All we can say, something had better be done because we're pretty sure that when Flexcar officially becomes Zipcar, it's gonna cost us more in annual fees.

Thanks for the very funny picture "uh, It's kind of hard to miss" ario_j. We found it in Seattlest's Flickr Pool.