New York – New York City is planning to join a number of municipalities around the nation that are charging motorists involved in accidents for emergency-response services. The FDNY is scheduled to begin sending out bills on July 1.
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The practice has drawn widespread outrage, and ten states have already banned it – Pennsylvania, Georgia, Florida, Indiana, Missouri,Oklahoma, Tennessee, Alabama, Arkansas and Louisiana. Sen. Kruger said he feels “very strongly that New York has an obligation to become the eleventh.”
The job of the New York City Fire Department should be to serve and protect, not serve and collect, says Senator Carl Kruger (D-Brooklyn), who is introducing legislation (S. 2277) outlawing the so-called “crash tax” – otherwise known as an “accident response service fee.”
“We’re already paying for emergency response services in the form of taxes. This practice amounts to double taxation,” he said.
Insurance companies have already expressed an unwillingness to foot the bill, Sen. Kruger said, leaving motorists who are at fault responsible for the charges – scheduled to be $490 for a crash or car fire with an injury, $415 for a car fire without injuries and $365 for a car wreck in which no one is hurt.
“What’s going to happen is that people will start refusing emergency help when they really need it. They’ll say ‘no thanks’ when the FDNY shows up and then drop dead of internal injuries a day later,” he said.
“You’ll also end up with drunk drivers, uninsured drivers and others who should be in custody avoiding detection by authorities if they refuse help,” Sen. Kruger added.
Twenty-eight states currently have pending legislation to outlaw the “crash tax.”
Double Taxation only?
Real estate taxes,
parking taxes,
water taxes,
sales taxes,
income taxes,
gas taxes, ……………….
Listen up Bloomberg bal gaveh,
How about a face mask that would meter the amount of oxygen that we breathe in, so we can close the budget gap.
What Sen. Kruger fails to understand is that we have NOT paid for these services with taxes; rather, our taxes are not high enough to pay for the level of emergency services we demand.
Not true. Our taxes are more than enough to reasonably foot the bill for services we receive. The problem is that our tax money is being diverted to pay for services that we DON’T receive, such as the welfare state, bloated overhead and waste in government, pensions and benefits to retired government workers, etc.
I for one pay more taxes than most and know that they are highter than most places in the world. So, it is those deadbeats that demand baal chenumb. But FL here I come and you can pay as much as you want for what you and the pensioneer welfareers want/demand.
I thought there was already a law on the books regarding this—not to steal!
WAY TO GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
For decades some municipalities and fire districts have been filing claims for their actions taken and for damages caused by automobile accidents. These claims have been quietly paid for by insurance companies. Now that more cities and districts are implementing programs to recover costs for these same actions which are covered by insurance policies, insurance advocates are calling foul, labeling the practice a “crash tax”. These advocates are very vocal about how fire departments, cities and districts are recovering specific expenses for services that in fact, are covered in their insurance policies, but have for years been paid for by property tax dollars.
Some insurance advocates argue that recovering any costs amounts to a double tax. So the question is: If the definition of double taxation is paying for the same service twice, and since we pay the insurance company to cover certain actions, if the fire department does not bill the insurance company for the covered service, would that constitute paying double for a service – thus creating the real double taxation?