Minnesota 1925 Levies on Automobile Owners For Better Highways Are Not Exorbitant. More Than the Automobiles Yield Less Than $12 Each of License or Registration Fee and $3.35 Gasoline Tax. Compared With Personal Property.

State license of $16.15 and $4.25 gasoline tax — a combined total of $20.40 was the complete tax and full good roads contribution on the average passenger automobile in Minnesota last year. Based on official reports just made public in St. Paul, the figures are held to apply fairly in Brown county as well as in the rest of the state.

More than half of the automobiles yielded less than $12 each of license or registration fee and $3.35 of gasoline tax, the records indicate. On the remaining higher-priced, heavier autos the average was $25.35–about $20.35 license and $5 gas tax. The highest tax average was 560 on commercial buses and to this the gas tax was estimated to have added nearly $200.

State tax officials said that at the 1925 rate the personal property tax if levied on an $800 automobile would be $15.25. If that is a fair average value, it was pointed out, the use of better highways is costing auto owners only a few dollars in extra taxes annually — a sum returned many times over by good roads savings on car running costs. Registration fees continuing less than the $18 pledged under Good Roads Amendment No. 1and less than the former combined personal property tax and state license, part of the gasoline tax now represents the only special highway tax in Minnesota.

Motor vehicle registration fees will be from 15 to 30 per cent lower this year than last, due to reduced tax rates and factory prices. Gas tax revenue, however, is expected to increase in proportion to the numbers of cars and trucks and the full year of collections against eight months in 1925. Income for needed improvements and upkeep on the most used highways will show slight if any gain, according to most estimates, and certainly not enough to offset the greater use of the roads.

Brown County Journal,

Feb. 12, 1926

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