Senate Tax Reform Bill to Eliminate Bike Commuter Benefit

@DismalScientist 167908 wrote:

The tax reform bill also eliminates parking benefits. It’s amazing how supposed bike advocates can be so easily swayed by eliminating very minor social engineering project. Bicycling commuting should not be subsidized independent of other commuting subsidies.

I would argue that it should. We already subsidize driving, because we allow emissions that we then need to find a way to clean up. Road construction is also more necessary for cars than for bikes, because cars a) are bigger and take up more space, and b) are heavier and damage roads more. Driving instead of bicycling increases healthcare costs, of which the government pays a part. So if a minor subsidy gets more people out of cars, it is a net gain to the government, in a way that a parking subsidy (which encourages yet more use of cars) is not.

Overall, I consider the bike commuting benefit one of the least objectionable parts of the bill. (Taxing people on discounts in their college tuition, and increasing taxes on those in long-term care, are obviously a lot more significant, for example.) However, equating parking benefits with bicycling benefits seems to me an unfair comparison.

@cvcalhoun 167935 wrote:

equating parking benefits with bicycling benefits seems to me an unfair comparison.

Instead of freaking out about removing the modest bike reimbursement provision, you should celebrate the elimination of the parking benefit. See this: https://la.streetsblog.org/2017/09/15/america-spends-7-3-billion-a-year-paying-affluent-people-to-drive-to-work/comment-page-1/

If parking benefits are provided, the other transit benefits have virtually no effect on commuting mode share. If you want to increase cycling’s mode share, decrease roadway maintenance and medical costs, it’s far more important to kill the parking subsidy than to preserve the tedious to use and seldom adopted bike expense subsidy.

(I’d like to see analysis of the impact of human powered commuting on group medical costs. I expect that cycling to work frequently vs. driving might reduce group medical costs enough to justify the < $20 month subsidy even without the tax break - that the bike subsidy might be one of the most cost-effective wellness programs an employer could adopt.)

@cvcalhoun 167964 wrote:

I’m hardly freaking out about the loss of the biking benefit

Very true. I’m sorry for my choice of words.

@DismalScientist 167908 wrote:

The tax reform bill also eliminates parking benefits. It’s amazing how supposed bike advocates can be so easily swayed by eliminating very minor social engineering project. Bicycling commuting should not be subsidized independent of other commuting subsidies.

I believe you’re thinking of the House Bill. My understanding is the House version kills them all, the Senate version ONLY kills the bike benefit.

@DismalScientist 167988 wrote:

A large point of the tax reform bill is to replace social engineering projects in the tax code with different social engineering projects in the tax code.

ftfy

You can call it social engineering all you want, and it is that too, but it’s also encouraging reductions in air pollution and reducing traffic congestion, in addition to whatever the health benefits might be. And there are many of us who believe that this is exactly what government should be doing, rather than, e.g., projecting our military in non-defense operations on foreign shores at great expense and human cost.

This isn’t tax reform, unless reverse Robin Hood is reform; it’s a tax cut for the wealthy and corporations at the expense of the rest of us. The biking benefit is minor, but getting rid of it is an extra, intentional slap in the face to all those “liberal snowflakes who need a handout from government.” It doesn’t save the government any money to speak of; it’s just symbolic. This congress and this president are there to take care of the well off who feel like they have been persecuted. It is they who are getting the handout and being subsidized by the rest of us.

/Monday morning rant