If you were under the impression that costs associated with local emergency services — police, fire, and ambulance — were carried by your property and/or income taxes, it may be time to think again. Gaining momentum in cities and counties across the country is something called a "crash tax," a fee designed to drum up revenue without the bother (and political damage) of increasing property or income taxes.
The idea is simple: Get into an accident within the limits of a so-taxed municipality, and pay for your emergency responders' time and trouble, either to the government directly or through your insurance company. According to AccidentTax.com (a site operated by the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America), there are at least eighteen governments, local and county, that have instituted the fees, charging between $100 to $2000 for accident response. And it looks like Orange County, Florida, will be the next. Thanks to an expected cash shortfall due to a recent statewide property-tax cut, the county (which includes the city of Orlando) drafted a crash-fee proposal, with plans to use the money to build three new fire stations and hire twenty-five firefighters.
Like most crash-fee structures, Orange County's system is tier-based and pretty simple. For a relatively minor fender-bender with no injuries, the charge is $450; minor injuries bump it to $650; major injuries or accidents requiring hazardous material cleanup will set you back (provided you survive) a whopping $1800.
When an accident is called in, the emergency dispatcher questions the caller to gauge its severity and determine which services to send to the scene. Notes Orange County Battalion Chief Vince Preston, "If there is the slightest doubt by the questioning and the answers that are received by the dispatcher that there is a need for medical intervention or hazardous material mitigation, then we will be dispatched."
What sets the Orange County plan apart from crash fees in other communities is that the charges are uniformly applied to anyone and everyone who has an accident within county limits, including local taxpayers, rather than just unlucky out-of-towners.
Opponents of such schemes note that insurance companies forced to swallow accident response fees almost certainly will pass along the expense to all policyholders (or send the accident victim an after-the-fact denial-of-service notice). And by many accounts, if you're in a wreck and you don't have insurance, you simply don't get billed.
Orange County's plan comes to a vote in April. Drive carefully.
Sources: AccidentResponseFees.org, AccidentTax.com, WFTV Orlando, USA Today.
