Downtown Parking Tax

[Detroitnerd]

Yes, so why are you adding to the taxes that will stop people coming downtown.

Um ... this was a general question, and I'll repeat it.

"Don't you think that governments use high taxes to discourage things they want to see less of and low taxes to encourage things they want to see more of?"

Pretty simple question.

If you want to have a general discussion on the merits of what taxes the government selects and how it then spends that money, perhaps the non-Detroit forum is a good place to have that discussion?

[ndavies]

Um ... this was a general question, and I'll repeat it.

"Don't you think that governments use high taxes to discourage things they want to see less of and low taxes to encourage things they want to see more of?"

Pretty simple question.

If you want to have a general discussion on the merits of what taxes the government selects and how it then spends that money, perhaps the non-Detroit forum is a good place to have that discussion?

No I lwant to have a dicussiion about the title of this thread. Taxes on parking lots downtown. I don't believe this works. Consumers will only be taxed so much. Once the taxes becomes too large of an issue they will find ways around it.

So once again, Why do you want to add taxes that the consumer will have to pay and then go out of their way to avoid? This will drive more consumers out of downtown causing more businesses to fail. This will leave more empty buildings needed to be torn down.

Bring more businesses downtown and those empty lots will be worth more with buildings on them than they are as empty parking lots. If you continue to tax business owners out of business you will just have more empty lots.

Consumers will still do what they've always done. Look for the cheaper alternative. Taxing city parking lots will just cause the consumer to find a cheaper place to park. In this case it will be a suburban free lot.

Until you can tax all surface lots in south east michigan with the tax you will continue to drive people away from where this tax is implemented to where it is tax free. By adding a parking lot tax to downtown, all you do is make downtown less competitive with it's suburban neighbors. This is exactly why downtown continues to lose businesses and people.

[Detroitnerd]

No I lwant to have a dicussiion about the title of this thread. Taxes on parking lots downtown. I don't believe this works. Consumers will only be taxed so much. Once the taxes becomes too large of an issue they will find ways around it.

As I understand it, the idea of nuisance taxes is that you take the things you don't want [[tobacco use, strip clubs, parking lots). It would be interesting to see what happens if you use the money to pay for things that discourage them [[tobacco counseling, women's shelters, mass transit).

So once again, Why do you want to add taxes that the consumer will have to pay and then go out of their way to avoid? This will drive more consumers out of downtown causing more businesses to fail. This will leave more empty buildings needed to be torn down.

Not if you provide another way to get downtown. If you build a serious light rail system, as Detroit used to have in the old days, then you have a viable way for people to get downtown without using the parking lots.

Bring more businesses downtown and those empty lots will be worth more with buildings on them than they are as empty parking lots. If you continue to tax business owners out of business you will just have more empty lots.

I think if you implement light rail, developers and businesses will take note and move in, invest money and even construct new. Now, if you have that in place, then would be a good time to tax the surface lots, or find some other way to make it a less lucrative business.

Consumers will still do what they've always done. Look for the cheaper alternative. Taxing city parking lots will just cause the consumer to find a cheaper place to park. In this case it will be a suburban free lot.

Not if you have alternatives in place. If you have alternatives in place that can bring as many people in and out of downtown as six freeway lanes, that's about 20,000 cars that won't need parking. Parking demand is lowered, making it less lucrative. And then taxes for parking lots makes the business even less lucrative. The end result is the cheapest place to park: No parking required at all.

Until you can tax all surface lots in south east michigan with the tax you will continue to drive people away from where this tax is implemented to where it is tax free. By adding a parking lot tax to downtown, all you do is make downtown less competitive with it's suburban neighbors. This is exactly why downtown continues to lose businesses and people.

Not necessarily. If you want to have a real downtown, with buildings on every lot, with people pouring in and out, with development reaching out beyond the CBD, you want as few vehicles as possible. Light rail carries six lanes' worth of people on something that takes up 1/10th of the area. Downtown Detroit was designed and built before 1915. It isn't intended to compete with Troy by trying to be Troy. It needs the infrastructure it was built around.

It all needs vision and planning and integration. Taxing something and hoping it goes away could well part of that. But trying to do things on the cheap, always being so terrified of taxes that we never can provide necessary services is a recipe for failure.