Document Type Report Gasoline Taxes from ATVS, Snowmobiles and Recreational Watercraft in Maine
Abstract/ Summary
The report updates three earlier reports looking at gasoline use and gasoline taxes paid by users of ATVs, snowmobiles and gasoline powered watercraft in Maine in 2001 following the passage of LD 977. Given time and financial limitations, this report maintains the same fuel use per vehicle/watercraft per season as determined earlier. This implies that these nonroad vehicles have the same level of use per year and that the efficiency per vehicle/watercraft is unchanged. While there has been increases in engine efficiency generally, engines and vehicle sizes have also risen as have the size of boat trailers. While there are different registration trends between ATVs, snowmobiles and watercraft, the overall trend is an increase in the number of nonroad vehicles. Given this starting point and taking into account Maine’s current tax on gasoline of $0.30/gallon, we find that ATVs, snowmobiles and gasoline powered recreational watercraft paid $1,076,772, $2,318,425, $2,296,193 respectively in gas taxes. This is a total of $5,691,390 in gas tax paid by these nonroad users in 2022. We also estimate the current distribution of gasoline taxes to nonroad user groups under current law and compare this to gas taxes paid by each user group.
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