No commuter tax

Imagine what $30 Billion could do for this city!

From the Economist:
"A panel of federal judges—among them John Roberts, now Chief Justice of the Supreme Court—ruled in November that the District of Columbia cannot impose a commuter tax without an act of Congress. The tax would have been levied on income earned in the city by non-residents. The mayor, Anthony Williams, had brought the suit, along with the city council, the city and several residents, to try to overturn a provision of DC’s 1973 Home Rule act, which prohibits the city from imposing a tax on any non-District residents.

The plaintiffs argued that the law discriminated against District residents because it imposed a higher tax burden on them. They estimated that the commuter-tax ban deprives the District of $30 billion in taxable income, or roughly $1.4 billion in actual annual revenue according to current tax rates. Some 300,000 people commute to work in the city every day. The governments of Maryland and Virginia intervened against the suit, arguing that DC was a special case and that such a tax would hurt their economies. This argument was dismissed by a federal judge last year, when the case was initially brought."