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BNSF uses ‘Friends’ network to fight higher taxes
Such a penny wise and pound foolish idea. All this will do is make the major carrier consider other options to shipping goods across the country. Minnesota will lose traffic travelling through the state if this makes it through litigation. Furthermore, as a volunteer firefighter in a small Midwest town, I have seen very few state dollar come through for rail emergency training from the government. The railroad itself has done more in the way of training. This smacks of a quick attempt to hit the railroads for more money at the expense of businesses and farmer because the railroads will pass the costs on.
BNSF really doesn’t have a practical alternative to routing through MN that wouldn’t cost more than they pay in MN tax.
Yet I oppose this mode-discriminatory tax because private freight rail is already taxed on their property unlike the highway mode. Perhaps an additional vehicle-mile on trucks, which are not taxed sufficiently to pay for the road damage they cause would free more public funds to pay for these needed grade separations, which arguably benefit road users more than rail users (not saying zero rail benefit, just less).
They already tax railroads. And crossings exist for the benefit of highway users - pedestrians are hardly the reason why they cost a small fortune.
Crossings upgrades need to come out of highway funds. Period.
Railroads and other corporations do not pay taxes. They simply pass on the tax expense to the consumers who buy the product being shipped and sold. So this is just another tax on the already overtaxed citizens of Minnesota and the United States.
Mr McGuire, who does pay taxes? If a person has to oat more taxes then they need to get more money from their employer or clients. Or spend less money elsewhere. Similarly a railway or any company either needs to earn its keep or cut back on expenses (like employees or maintenance).
If a corporation is not earning enough money to lay its expenses (like taxes) it either ends in bankruptcy or becomes a public charity. In the former case I give the examples of Rock Island. And in the latter Conrail or Amtrak.
@ROBERT J MCGUIRE - makes sense when there’s a level playing field, does not make sense when a single player in a heavily competitive industry is targeted. What essentially happens is those consumers you speak of that have the taxes passed on to them see less taxed suppliers as costing less than they should, and overtaxed suppliers as costing more than they should.
Essentially this policy is yet another massive movement of costs from road to rail, some of the exact same policies that caused the entire railroad industry to collapse in the late 1960s and early seventies.
BNSF needs to do more than use their “Friend’s” network. They need to see what they can do to close crossings, and refuse to cooperate with the State and local governments when it comes to building new ones. Perhaps a gentle reminder who those crossings benefit (clue: not the railroad) might make idiot governors and free-ride highway advocates to come to their senses.
This is just another example of how the “trickle down theory of economics” is practiced both by private industry (read Reagan Republicans) and government. The former claim that the tax breaks afforded the rich will trickle down to the taxpayers. The government collects funds via taxes which then trickle down to those they think they are helping after all the levels of government get their due share.
This is why I don’t like our governor, besides, the state actually has a surplus.
I would think that Federal Preemption would stop this plan in its tracks, although it will probably take a court fight for BNSF to win.
Tax & spend,tax & spend,tax & spend is all these idiot liberals are capable of
Scot-better than borrow and spend, which is the Republican mantra. Whatever your political slant, this is a bad tax.