Recreational Vehicle ‘User Fees’ Studied

The Bush Administration plans to propose excise taxes on recreational vehicles, off-road vehicles, camping equipment and pleasure boats despite the concern of some Administration officials that they might be a violation of President Bush’s “no new taxes” pledge.

The taxes, ranging from 1% to 2.5%, would help pay for a variety of environmental and recreational programs worth $588 million in the coming fiscal year, including park acquisition, wildlife programs and a “presidential tree-planting initiative,” according to a draft of the proposal by the Office of Management and Budget.

The taxes, described as “user fees” in OMB’s draft, would raise an estimated $275 million in fiscal 1991, while an additional $313 million would come from the Land and Water Conservation Fund, a 25-year-old Interior Department program to purchase new park lands.

Bush’s “no new taxes” pledge was a mainstay of his 1988 presidential campaign, and some top Bush advisers expressed concern that the excise taxes could be construed as a retreat, according to sources.

The White House decided, however, that the excise taxes could be defended as user fees on the grounds that they would be earmarked for specific programs, and that the taxes would be included in the President’s fiscal 1991 budget to be submitted to Congress in January. Officials cautioned that the details of the plan have changed somewhat from the initial OMB draft. But they declined to provide any specifics.

Both the Ronald Reagan and Bush administrations have proposed hundreds of millions of dollars in user fees, which can range from entrance fees at national parks to fees charged to food processors for meat inspection by the Agriculture Department.

But the recreational excise taxes are a significant departure from previous proposals because the link between the fee and the government service being provided is much less direct. Only last month, OMB Director Richard G. Darman said that a proposal to increase cigarette excise taxes to pay for health-care programs would not be acceptable because it would violate Darman’s principle that if a tax “looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is a duck.”

The tax proposal appears likely to provide ammunition to those who say that Bush will be forced to go back on his pledge of no new taxes. In addition, because it originated at OMB, the proposal is likely to fuel suspicion among conservatives that Darman is trying to manipulate Bush into a tax increase.