Omaha World-Herald: Static gas tax rate curbs Nebraska’s buying power
media mention“It’s an inevitable fact that if gas tax rates are not updated from time to time, the tax is not going to keep pace with construction costs,” said Carl Davis of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a think tank in Washington.
However, due to the difficulty of mustering the votes to raise a tax, gas tax rates rarely do change. Since 1995, Nebraska policymakers have enacted only one notable gas tax increase: a 1.2-cent boost in 2008 that was about one-tenth what was needed to keep pace with inflation over the past 20 years.