Trucking news and briefs for Wednesday, June 30, 2021:
Beginning in 2023, all vehicles weighing more than 26,000 pounds will be required to pay a vehicle miles traveled tax for every mile driven in Connecticut.
The fee will range from 2.5 cents per mile for trucks weighing 26,000-28,000 pounds to 17.5 cents per mile for vehicles weighing more than 80,000 lbs.
Beginning Jan. 1, 2023, Connecticut will charge truck owners between 2.5 and 17.5 cents per mile for every mile traveled in the state.
As expected, the new law is not popular within the trucking industry. In an op-ed for the Greenwich Time, American Trucking Associations President and CEO Chris Spear said the new law “will have devastating consequences for businesses and families across Connecticut.”
“It doesn’t require a Ph.D. in economics to understand that when the cost of truck transportation goes up, the price of what’s being hauled does, too,” he said. “Everyday consumers and the working people of Connecticut will feel the sting of [Gov. Ned] Lamont’s truck tax with each purchase of groceries, gasoline, prescription drugs, construction materials, home furnishings, household goods and so on.”
Spear added that truck taxes such as this are “difficult to enforce and easy to evade, rewarding bad actors and punishing the good.”
