Apportionment of Federal Md Funds

A further use of the data reported to FHWA is allocating Federal Highway Trust Fund revenues to the States. Tn an effort to ensure that each State receives back in highway funding a reasonable portion of Trust Fund receipts contributed by its highway users, Congress created several funding mechanisms known as -equity adjustments." These include the 90-percent minimum allocation, the donor state bonus, and the 90-percent-of-payments adjustment.

To determine each State's eligibility for these equity adjustments, FHWA must determine the amount of Trust Fund receipts received from highway users in each State. This cannot be determined from Federal tax records. The Highway Trust Fund receives part of the proceeds of Federal excise taxes imposed on highway motor fuels and all the proceeds from taxes on truck and trailer chassis, truck tires, and heavy-vehicle use. Most of the excise taxes credited to the Trust Fund are not collected by the Federal Government directly from the consumer They are, instead, paid to the Internal Revenue Service by the producer or importer of the taxable product. Exceptions are the tax on trucks and trailers, which is paid by the retailer, and the heavy-vehicle use tax, which is paid by the vehicle owner In fact, because the home offices of major producers of motor fuels are concentrated in New York, Pennsylvania, and Texas, more than half of the revenue from the Federal gasoline tax is received from just those three States.