PLATFORM : No Free Ride

A 10% tax is going to have little or no effect on ride-sharing. Ten percent is not enough to make a difference for the average person who parks downtown; and for many of those people, the employer will be paying the taxes because the parking is subsidized.

Begin working with employers to eliminate free parking. If you tax the employer directly for provision of the free parking, then you start to make a difference. Or you can make the employer provide free parking for ride-sharers. But as long as their parking is paid for by employers, or substantially subsidized by the employer, people aren’t going to think about ride-sharing.

Right now if the employer provides free parking, the employee pays no federal income tax on that benefit. But if the employer provides more than a $15 transit pass or ride-sharing subsidy, it’s all taxed. What we would like to see is federal tax law changed so that parking benefits and transit benefits are treated equally.