Kevin Schofield of SCC Insight provides a rundown of some of the issues the Seattle City Council is debating as part of the 2020 budget. One of these is Mayor Durkan’s proposal to levy a new tax on transportation network companies (TNC; i.e., Uber and Lyft). The Council’s staff memo on the proposal includes some notable points:

If the Council adopts the Mayor’s proposal, combined taxes and fees on these companies would increase from $0.24 per ride to $0.75 per ride on July 1, 2020. The City Budget Office (CBO) estimates that this would result in 947,718 (2.9 percent) fewer rides in 2020 and 2.1 million (5.6 percent) fewer rides in 2021 than would otherwise be expected. (The estimate also assumes that $4 would be added per ride as a result of the Mayor’s separate proposal on minimum compensation for TNC drivers.)

CBO has also reduced its estimate of the revenue increase from the proposal, from $133.2 million through 2025 to $122.4 million through 2025:

The chart below (from the staff memo) shows how the Mayor proposes using the revenues. (FAS is the Department of Finance and Administrative Services; the red bars represent the cost of administering the tax.)

Councilmember Herbold has already proposed redirecting the revenues proposed by the Mayor for the Center City streetcar “toward other transit uses, such as the Sound Transit West Seattle and Ballard Link Extensions.”

As for the structure of the proposed tax, the staff memo notes that it is a flat rate per ride and “uses data the City already collects from TNCs.” But,

Council may choose to create a more complex structure that would use a variable tax rate or surcharges to achieve other/additional policy objectives. For example, a higher tax rate during peak times or by geography may reduce the impact of TNCs on traffic congestion during specific times or in certain areas. A variable rate or surcharge for a single rider compared to a “pool” or shared trip could encourage higher occupancy vehicles. A flat rate per mile could discourage longer trips.