Bailout provided passage of Bicycle Commuter bill

[Tuckervill]

Pays for WHAT?

I think it's just a tax incentive to get employers to encourage bike commuting. If you work in a big city where parking is scarce, and your employer puts a bike rack or showers in to encourage bike commuting, or the HR department launches an awareness campaign, the EMPLOYER gets to take a $20 a month tax credit per bike-commuting employee.

I don't know how they'd prove how many bike commute, AND what if I commute only part time? And what kind of trouble would a company in the 'burbs of Dallas go to to claim the credit when they know almost all of the employees are driving? Sounds to me like an entrance into regulating bike commuting, licensing bikes, and riders, etc., etc. That's bad news to me.

Karen

[madscot13]

so obviously it is full of loop holes and lacks any direction or responsibility. huh I wonder if the rest of the bail out plan is like that. yay for poor government management of our lives!

[tulip]

Public transit incentives like this are very common. I think this is a good start that will likely need tweaking and improvement, but it's a start and that's a whole lot better than we've ever had before. Let's not trash the whole program; I certainly don't know the details.

[sfa]

What if you work for a non-profit that doesn't file taxes? We have one employee who is in charge of all of the campus "green" projects and is very supportive of bicycle commuting, but we/he can't find the money to get a bike rack installed at the fitness center (where I go to shower and change). This kind of tax credit could help pay for something like that.

Sarah

[Tuckervill]

The non-profit is big enough to have a fitness center?

I think they can find the money for a bike rack.

But tax credits don't apply to nonprofits at all, because ALL the taxes are "credited"!

Karen

[sfa]

The non-profit is big enough to have a fitness center?

I think they can find the money for a bike rack.

But tax credits don't apply to nonprofits at all, because ALL the taxes are "credited"!

It's a college, so of course there's a fitness center! And yeah, it bugs me that they budget for big-ticket things like buildings but we can't get $6,000 in the budget for a suicide prevention program. Since the board has to approve every expenditure, we don't have a lot of flexibility in the budget. The trick is to convince the right person early in the budget process that this is a necessary expense. But since we can't increase our budgets from one year to the next these days, we have to make do with level funding, and since prices for everything keep going up, this means that in reality we have to make do with less each year. And since there's only a handful of us on campus who commute by bike, that makes our needs a pretty low priority in the tiny "green campus" budget.

The reason I asked is because employees at non-profits can use pre-tax flex accounts for medical and childcare expenses. I'm not clear if this legislation is strictly a benefit for a tax-paying employer or if it's something that has to be offered to employees like a flex account.

Sarah

[tulip]

It's a college, so of course there's a fitness center!

I've never heard of a college without bike racks! Don't the students ride bikes to class? Couldn't an argument be made that bike racks would be a benefit for the students?

[indigoiis]

I think getting a copy of the exact bill wording is in order... anyone know where to find that?