Car Tab Tax Issue Epitomizes Sound Transit Decade of Fraud

The Sept 8^th Seattle Times B1 page article, ”Sound Transit can keep collecting car tab taxes as judge tosses lawsuit” epitomizes a decade of Sound Transit fraud.  The car tab taxes are Sound Transit’s second-largest source of revenue from the 2016 ST3 ballot measure.  Prior to its passage, predicted car tab costs were included in a Sound Transit 7/08/2016 post entitled: “ST3 plan would cost typical adult $169 annually or $14 per month”.

It included the following:

Here’s how much a typical adult would pay if ST3 is approved:

MVET

An adult owning the median value motor vehicle would pay an additional $43 per year in MVET if ST3 were passed. The updated calculation reflects an annual median value $5,333 of vehicles in the Sound Transit District. MVET taxes are determined by a state of Washington depreciation schedule for a specific vehicle’s model and production year. The previous calculation relied on a less representative average vehicle value of $10,135 for the more expansive tri-county area, for a significantly higher annual cost of $78 per adult. 

Sound Transit’s decision to use a $5,333 as the median motor vehicle value to tell voters what car tabs would cost played a major role in ST3 passage.  A Joel Connelly June 8^th 2017 Seattle PI article reported “ST3 would get only 37% support were voters given a do-over”.

Sound Transit dropped the ST3tax.com website they used to estimate, “How much tax per year will you pay for Sound Transit if ST3 passes”. (They must have done so very soon after the 7/08/2016 post since a one-year offer to sell the website for $1385 ended on 7/20/2017 with apparently no takers.) 

Rather than conceding they had misled voters Sound Transit responded to voter complaints in an April 2017 post headlined “Sound Transit 3 car tab rollback threatens light rail to Everett”

During the campaign, Sound Transit was completely transparent about the taxes. We all knew that our car tabs would increase a lot in 2017 to help fund Sound Transit. So when the first invoices arrived, the vast majority of people just paid their tabs. But a vocal minority, with big tabs from expensive cars, took their displeasure to Olympia, hoping that the Legislature would listen to their stories and disregard the will of the people.

Sound Transit apparently blames the legislature since the Sept 8^th article claims “Sound Transit uses an outdated formula, inherited from the Legislature, to estimate a car’s value for the purposes of collecting taxes. The formula inflates newer cars values relative to Kelley Blue Book values, resulting in higher car-tab fees”.  

The reality is the Sound Transit decision to lie about what car tabs would cost played a major role in passing ST3.  To later lie about lying, exemplifies a decade of going way beyond mere malfeasance or incompetence since Prop 1 passed.