Motor Trade Group Demands Cut in Tax
Camden Courier-Post - February 9, 1938
Bleakly Points to Increased Revenues and Surplus for Highways
Trenton,Feb. 5. — The New Jersey Automotive Trade Association, an organization of new car dealers, today demanded that the Legislature reduce gasoline taxes and motor vehicle registration fees.
F. Stanley Bleakly, former Camden county assemblyman and now president of the association, said automobile tax revenues have been in creasing annually but that tax relief is denied to motorists despite declarations that the highway department receives more funds than it needs.
"When the accounts of the State Motor Vehicle Department for 1937 are compiled it will show that motorists paid into the state more than $40,000,000 in taxes," Bleakly said.
"In 1936 motorists paid into the state $39,154,000. Since 1926 taxes collected from motorists increased, more than $27,000,000.
"If more income is realized than is needed by the state highway department and other state agencies dependent upon it for operating revenues. then registration fees and the gasoline tax should be reduced.
"While it has never been stated publicly, the opinion seems to prevail that the person who owns an automobile is opulent and therefore can absorb all the taxes that can be imposed. Such a theory, whether written or unwritten, is a fallacy and unfair.
"Just recently when huge dismissals were ordered by the automobile industry the nation heard a hue and cry that such a. step would strangle economic recovery. By the same token excessive taxation strangles the industry and slowly but surely deprives many thousands from earning their livelihood by the direct and indirect factors incident to the automobile.
"The New Jersey Automotive Trade' Association earnestly requests the Legislature to approve its bills establishing a flat $10 fee for automobile registration in place of the unsound sliding scale of assessments based on motor horsepower, and reduce the driver's permit fee in accordance with the following: $2 for the initial permit instead of $3, and $1 for each annual consecutive renewal."