> Barges don't pay for US waterway use. There's a tax on fuel, but it pays maybe 10% of the cost of maintaining waterways.
Do you have a citation for this 10%?
I operate a tugboat company. We move barges. We currently pay an excise tax of $0.29/gallon of fuel burned on inland routes. There is no good tracking or enforcement, but the tax is there.
This is a long-standing political issue. Much has been written on waterway cost recovery, but most of it is old. Congressional Budget Office study from the 1980s says "User fees now in effect recover approximately 10 percent of the Corps
of Engineers costs of operating and maintaining the inland waterway
system."[1]
The Waterways Council (the barge industry's lobby) talks a lot about cost-benefit ratios of barge operations and why their infrastructure should be subsidized.[2] They argue that lower pollution and less infrastructure cost per ton mile justifies Federal spending. They're probably not wrong.
Thanks for that CBO document. Yeah, I wish I knew what the percentage was now. Certainly the tax is higher than in the 80s.
There are some perverse outcomes. In South Florida, I see boats doing nothing but advertising, floating billboards, causing drawbridges to open. I have no idea if they are paying the excise tax.
Do you have a citation for this 10%?
I operate a tugboat company. We move barges. We currently pay an excise tax of $0.29/gallon of fuel burned on inland routes. There is no good tracking or enforcement, but the tax is there.