Tax Hikes Mean Dialing Back Trips, Budgets, Residents Say

Ben Jamil stood under a tree Saturday afternoon taking long, intermittent puffs on his cigarette while waiting for a bus at 16th and P streets NW.

Smoking is a longtime habit, and he shrugged at the idea of the D.C. Council raising taxes on cigarettes yet again to close a shortfall in the budget. But instead of fretting about the tax increase, Jamil said, he would do what tax opponents had said smokers would do.

"Living in this area, you can go to Virginia to get them for a third of the price," he said.

Jamil's response was one of many to the council's decision on Friday to raise taxes on sales, gasoline and cigarettes, which, along with spending cuts, is designed to make up a $666 million budget shortfall over the next three years.

The council voted to raise the sales tax from 5.75 percent to 6 percent and the gas tax from 20 cents a gallon to 23.5 cents a gallon. The cigarette tax was increased by 50 cents, to $2.50 a pack, the third jump in a year.

The decision was made quickly, with no public input, so the residents who spoke Saturday were some of the first to have their say. Their responses ranged from worried to irked to indifferent.

Ernest Johnson, a Michigan Park resident, said he expects an impact on his pocketbook because he is on the road a lot.

As an insurance investigator, Johnson said, he drives from Baltimore to Virginia Beach. Although his company compensates him for miles driven on the job, he often makes trips to see family members on the way.

Raising the gas tax, although by just a bit, would force him to cut back on the family visits, he said.

"While I might go six or seven times a year," Johnson said, sitting in a plastic chair while his forest-green Mercedes-Benz was being washed at an Exxon station in Northeast Washington, "I might cut it down now to four or five times."

Keisha Smith, who was filling up her tank at the Exxon station, said she felt the tax increases were inevitable and expressed cautious acceptance of what she might end up paying for gas.

"If it's no more than $3, I'm fine with it," she said.

Others said that raising taxes during an economic downturn wasn't wise and could have a ripple effect on industries already affected by increased costs.

One small population in the District will probably be unaffected by the tax increases: interns.

Manuel Bueno, a University of Chicago graduate student who is interning at a development bank for the summer, said he hadn't given much thought to the changes.

"I don't think I'll be affected that much, because I'll be leaving in a month," he said as he walked up the steps to the Mount Pleasant Branch Library.

Not so for Smith, who said that even though she was willing to "go with the flow" of paying more taxes at the pump, she would still have to mind her spending.

The tax increases "are going to affect me," she said before getting back in her car. "But it's life, and there's nothing I can do about it."