State lawmakers are advancing a startling array of more than a dozen proposals this year to increase taxes or impose new levies on everything from marijuana and prepaid cellphones to rocks.

In some cases, the tax increases are promoted as kindly attempts to assist Hawaii’s poor and working families, such as plans to boost state income taxes on wealthier residents while cutting taxes for the less fortunate.

Other tax plans are presented as issues of fairness, such as bills moving through the House and Senate to pressure online retailers to finally cough up the taxes owed for internet sales.

Still others are pitched as ways to provide better government services, such as a bill to impose higher gasoline taxes to improve the state transportation network, and another to boost property taxes and hotel room taxes to pay for better public schools.

And the largest of the tax proposals smacks of desperation. Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell is seeking an extension of the half-percent excise surcharge for rail on Oahu to bail out the 20-mile rail project, which is vastly over budget and approaching a total price tag of $10 billion.

Caldwell told lawmakers the only financial alternative to extending the excise tax to fund completion of the rail project is to increase city property taxes.

The legislative session is just a few weeks old, and history suggests many of the tax proposals likely will be scaled back or scrapped before the scheduled adjournment in May. Still, a number of observers agree it is unusual for so many broad-based and other tax increase proposals to be moving forward.

Little public opposition

Former state Sen. Sam Slom, a longtime small business advocate who was voted out of office last fall, said now that the 2016 elections are over, the dominant Hawaii Democrats are emboldened to increase taxes.

“It was to be expected,” Slom said. “I said that after the election, and with no real vocal opposition, that this was probably what they were going to do, with the top outlaw being rail, of course.”

There doesn’t appear to be any great outcry from the public yet over the variety of tax proposals, but Slom said it has been increasingly difficult in recent years to get people to speak out at the Legislature. That’s because people are “just tired out,” he said.

“At this point, a lot of people in this community have given up,” Slom said. “They’ve given up trying to make any kind of change whatsoever. Many of them have been involved in past battles, the rail or (general excise) tax or something else, and those who haven’t moved away just feel that you can’t fight City Hall.”

House Finance Chairwoman Sylvia Luke (D, Makiki-Nuuanu-Pauoa) said many of the tax bills now in play at the Legislature are measures lawmakers debated in the past, but never approved. She said she doesn’t see much that’s unusual or new about the tax proposals being considered this year.

She noted lawmakers agreed in 2015 to extend the Oahu excise tax surcharge for rail by five years, and also considered a proposal last year to increase income taxes on people with the highest incomes while eliminating or cutting income taxes for the poor. The income tax proposal didn’t pass last year, but is advancing again in both the House and Senate this year.

Lawmakers also considered — and rejected — Gov. David Ige’s proposal to increase gasoline taxes, vehicle weight taxes and registration fees last year. Those ideas were resubmitted by Ige again this year, and have been tentatively approved by the Senate Transportation and Energy Committee.

In past years, lawmakers also have searched for ways to collect excise taxes on internet retail and wholesale purchases, Luke said, and that idea is up for consideration again this session. Local consumers who buy goods on the internet are already legally required to pay the state excise tax, but very few do.

Luke said some lawmakers are eager to press the internet issue this year because online giant Amazon.com is now voluntarily collecting taxes on behalf of several dozen other states, but not Hawaii.

The concept of a dedicated tax to increase funding for public education is another issue that is raised almost annually. Lawmakers last year considered a plan to boost the state excise tax to raise more money for schools, but finally dropped the idea.

This year the Hawaii State Teachers Association is lobbying hard for a proposed constitutional amendment to impose a property tax surcharge on investment properties and hotel rooms to increase funding for education. Those bills are moving in both the House and Senate, and if the teachers union can convince lawmakers to go along, the issue would be placed on the ballot for the voters to decide.

Luke said a proposal for a new tax on medical marijuana — which is already subject to the state excise tax — and a proposal for a new tax on e-cigarettes and electronic smoking devices are also familiar ideas lawmakers have considered before. Electronic smoking tax proposals are moving in both the House and Senate this year, and the marijuana tax has been tentatively approved by the House Health Committee.

Still another tax idea advancing in both the House and Senate is a plan to increase the state conveyance tax on sales of real state valued in the millions of dollars to provide more money for affordable housing.

“These are not new initiatives, I don’t think,” Luke said. “That is part of our job, to take a look at all of these issues and continue to get more information and get more facts, and if it doesn’t work out at the end, it doesn’t work out.”

Still, there are a few new wrinkles in the tax discussion this year, such as a proposed tax on basalt cinders and trap rock to raise money for the Pacific International Space Center for Exploration Systems, or PISCES. Basalt is used in the production of asphalt and concrete. That tax plan is moving forward in the House.

Support by businesses

Some tax proposals are getting a political boost from key players in the business community, which may add to the momentum behind specific bills this year.

For example, the Retail Merchants of Hawaii, which represents more than 2,000 local storefront operations, supports the plan to collect taxes owed for internet sales, while the Chamber of Commerce Hawaii supports both the excise tax extension for rail and the internet tax plan.

The retailers say it is unfair to require that traditional stores pay the excise tax while online retailers don’t pay, and Sherry Menor-McNamara, president and chief executive officer of the chamber, said the chamber agrees.

The chamber is monitoring the increasing number of tax bills this session with some concern, but Menor-McNamara said the business group has supported the rail project “from the very beginning.”

While the chamber is concerned about the escalating cost of rail, the project is creating jobs, will improve the quality of life on Oahu and will spur long-term economic development, she said.

Menor-McNamara said the chamber opposes plans to increase the conveyance tax, property taxes or tax rates on higher-income residents because many small-business owners would be affected. “Any tax increases such as that would definitely hurt the small-business community,” she said.

Even from Republican lawmakers, the response to some of the proposals has been mixed. State Rep. Bob McDermott (R, Ewa Beach-Iroquois Point) said he is supporting the excise tax extension for rail, and he has not opposed the teachers’ proposal to allow voters to decide whether to increase property taxes to provide more funding for public education.

However, he voted against the increase in the state conveyance tax and the basalt cinder tax, a proposal he described as “stupid.”

Luke said everyone is aware of how difficult it is for working families to survive in Hawaii, which is part of the reason lawmakers are considering a plan to cut income taxes for the poor and increase them for wealthier taxpayers.

“It’s our obligation to continue to look at ways to provide tax relief for our local residents. How do you get there and how much are we willing to do is always going to be the question,” she said.

In the state Senate, Ways and Means Committee Chairwoman Jill Tokuda said she does not want to impose two broad-based taxes in the same year.

“I don’t feel it’s in the best interest of the state or the taxpayer to layer on multiple broad-based tax increases at a time,” she said. “You have to be very thoughtful about where you apply that kind of burden, especially at a time when the economy seems to be slowing down a bit.”

Tokuda (D, Kaneohe-Kailua) said she is unsure if she will consider Ige’s proposal for a gas tax increase this year, and that she has concerns about the teachers’ plan to boost property taxes for education.

“The unintended consequence of the enabling language might be that we’re going to hit some of our families right now that are already struggling as it is to pay their real property taxes, and it would be very difficult for them to manage with this additional assessment, as it is,” Tokuda said.

Slom said he believes the variety of tax proposals moving this year is a sign lawmakers are bracing for reductions in federal funding under President Donald Trump’s administration.

He said Tokuda and Luke have expressed concern in recent years about overspending by the state, “but as a philosophy, the majority party will spend every last nickel and dime that they can.” Slom said he hopes the projected loss of federal funding will spark real change.

“I don’t want anybody to suffer, but we have obviously overspent, wasted money, can’t account for money over the years,” he said. “It’s not a lack of revenue. It’s a lack of discipline and a lack of accountability and responsibility.”