A Tax on Virtue? Ebbin, Surovell Target Virginia Hybrid Tax

Written by Drew Hansen

No one gets everything they want in a compromise, but enough legislators were able to put aside their differences this year to pass a transportation bill — one that allows the state to charge an extra annual tax on electric and alternative fuel vehicles. Soon after its passage, Democratic state Sen. Janet Howell of Reston said those provisions "make me want to gag."

An upcoming effort by state Sen. Adam Ebbin, D-Alexandria, and Del. Scott Surovell, D-Mount Vernon, may help settle Howell's stomach.

The pair say they will present legislation on the first day of the 2014 General Assembly session to repeal the hybrid tax.

Ebbin and Surovell announced their intentions Monday, the day the tax took effect, in front of the state DMV office in Alexandria and were joined by hybrid drivers and members of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network.

“People felt like this was a tax on virtue,” Surovell said. “It was a tax on people for doing the right thing (by lowering emissions). We had people asking questions, ‘Are we going to start taxing vegetables?’ ”

The annual fee was first attached to Gov. Bob McDonnell’s transportation bill, where it was rejected by the House and Senate. It ultimately came out of a conference committee “for some reason which was never fully explained” and then presented as “a take-it-or-leave-it proposition,” Surovell said.

McDonnell, a Republican, reasoned hybrid vehicles use the roadways as much as gasoline-powered vehicles but are paying less of the gas tax because they’re fueling up fewer times. Ebbin and Surovell delivered a petition to the governor asking him to throw out the tax.

“The punitive annual hybrid tax was not well thought out and hastily passed,” Ebbin said.

The fee was knocked down to $64 from an initial $100 tax.

Ebbin and Surovell said the tax has a lopsided, unfair impact on Northern Virginia. 

Surovell said 82 percent of the state’s 9,000 hybrid vehicles are registered in Northern Virginia. That hybrid tax money will go into a statewide transportation fund. About 7 million vehicles are registered in Virginia.

“I think going forward we have a very good chance of repealing it,” Surovell said, adding that some colleagues in the General Assembly told him they would not have voted for the measure on its own.