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Key Findings:

1. Sound Transit is a regional transit agency that imposes taxes and builds and operates services in parts of King, Pierce and Snohomish counties. 
2. The largest tax increase was approved by voters in 2016; a 0.8 percent car tab tax increase on top of the existing 0.3 percent. The tax is assessed based on inflated vehicle values.
3. As people continue to receive car tab tax overcharges, they have asked their state and local officials for tax relief. 
4. Solutions that would provide tax relief are being proposed at the Legislature, at the courts, and at the ballot box this year.
5. As families have endured two years of tax overcharges already, an honest car tab fix is badly needed and long overdue.

Introduction

The 2019 legislative session is starting, and it looks like Sound Transit’s questionable integrity in securing additional taxing authority in 2016 will consume a good portion of the debate yet again.

Sound Transit is a regional transit agency that imposes taxes and builds and operates Link light rail, Sounder commuter rail, and express buses in parts of King, Pierce and Snohomish counties. The taxes include a large motor vehicle excise tax (1.1 percent), sales and use tax (1.4 percent), and a property tax ($25 per $100,000 of assessed value).

The largest tax increase was approved by voters in 2016; a 0.8 percent car tab tax increase on top of the existing 0.3 percent, bringing the total yearly car-value tax to 1.1 percent.

Sound Transit uses an unfair vehicle valuation

When taxpayers started receiving car tab renewals in 2017, they were shocked to find out that the car tab tax Sound Transit imposed was significantly higher than what officials led them to expect. In securing additional taxing authority from lawmakers in 2015 and in promoting Sound Transit 3 (ST3) to voters during the 2016 election, officials quietly capitalized on an old, inflated and repealed vehicle valuation schedule so the agency could collect maximum tax revenue from families in the region.

Few people really understood this – except Sound Transit officials, who chose to keep this as obscure as possible in the authorizing legislation.

Some lawmakers tried to hold the agency accountable and provide tax relief for their constituents in various ways – in 2017 and again in 2018. Both legislative sessions ended without any agreement among lawmakers on a solution.  

This year, Sound Transit officials will be confronted by frustrated taxpayers yet again and on three fronts – at the Legislature, at the courts, and at the ballot box. Clearly, this unfair tax is a problem that cannot be ignored.

Download the full Legislative Memo