Department of Revenue says Flexcar users must pay rental car tax

Fees are going up, at least for the near future, unfortunately:

Thousands of King County residents who use the Flexcar car-sharing service will be charged an extra 9.7 percent "rental car" tax after the state Department of Revenue determined that car-sharing services were essentially rental car businesses.

The Seattle P-I quoted Department of Revenue spokesman Mike Gowrylow as apologetically saying the agency has no choice but to "administer the law as written." Fortunately, Ron Sims isn't taking this change lying down:

King County Executive Ron Sims insisted that car sharing was not car renting and said Thursday that the county would go to the Legislature to exempt car-sharing companies from the rental car tax.

"We're going to take it to Olympia next year," said Sims, who is not a Flexcar member. "You're taxing something that we see as more of a public transportation element and one that we think is beneficial to the strategies we have for getting people out of their cars."

Kudos to Ron for his pledge. We will be joining him in enthusiastically supporting legislation to clarify that the rental car tax should not be collected from customers of services like Flexcar. Flexcar is about providing convenience for Puget Sound residents who don't own a car or don't have one available. It is not a rental company like Alamo, Hertz, or Enterprise.