1. Data for 2007 from U.S. Treasury Bulletin, March 2008; data for 2008 from September 2008 Reports on the Highway Account of the Highway Trust Fund from the Bureau of the Public Debt. These are gross receipts, prior to various refunds, tax credits, and transfers.
2. Congressional Research Service, Leaking Underground Storage Tank Trust Fund, Report for Congress 97- 472 E (Washington, DC: August 1997).
3. The Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990 allocated existing motor fuel tax revenues to the General Fund.
4. Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), Financing Federal Aid Highways (Washington, DC: 2007), Appendix.
5. Travel growth rates provided by FHWA, Office of Legislative and Governmental Affairs.
6. Energy Information Administration, Annual Energy Outlook 2009 Early Release (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Energy, December 2008), Table 7.
7. Transportation Research Board (TRB), The Fuel Tax Report and Alternatives for Transportation Funding (Washington, DC: 2006).
8. Highway Trust Fund estimates contained in both the FY 2009 Budget Midsession Review (July 2008) and the Congressional Budget Office Summer 2008 Baseline (August 2008) show very little change in forecast receipts through 2013 and 2018, respectively.
9. National Cooperative Highway Research Program, "Future Financing Options to Meet Highway and Transit Needs," Report 20-24(49) (Washington, DC: TRB, September 2006).
10. TRB, op. cit. note 7.
11. Jonathan R. Peters and Jonathan K. Kramer, "The Inefficiency of Toll Collection as a Means of Taxation: Evidence from the Garden State Parkway," Transportation Quarterly, vol. 57, no. 3 (summer 2003), pp. 17-31.
12. HDR, Inc., Comparing Administrative Costs of Collecting Highway Revenues: Fuel Tax vs. Direct User Charges, prepared for U.S. Department of Transportation, December 2008.
13. Peters and Kramer, op. cit. note 11.
14. Gabriel Roth, "A Road Policy for the Future," Regulation, vol. 26, no. 1 (spring 2003), p. 59, states that a national poll conducted by Andrews McKenna Research in 2002 found that 89 percent of Americans believe highway taxes should be used to fund highway needs.
15. U.S. Treasury Bulletin, July 2008.
16. Tax Foundation, Paying at the Pump: Gasoline Taxes in America (Washington, DC: October 2007).
17. The Suits Index ranges from +1.0 to -1.0, with a 0.0 indicating that the tax burden is perfectly proportional to income at all quintiles. At the extremes, a +1.0 would indicate an extremely progressive tax and a -1.0 would indicate an extremely regressive tax. In the Texas Comptroller Study, MFTs received a Suits Index score of -0.25 while general sales taxes received a -0.18.
18. Elaine Murakami and Jennifer Young, "Daily Travel by Persons with Low Income," paper prepared for NPTS Symposium, Bethesda, MD, October 29-31, 1997, p. 11.
19. Montana Department of Transportation, Determining the Current Rates of Motor Fuel Tax Evasion for the State for the State of Montana (Helena, MT: November 2006).
20. Office of Transportation Policy Studies, FHWA, "Fuel Tax Evasion," at www.fhwa.dot.gov/policy/otps/fueltax.htm , viewed October 2008.