Assessing the Feasibility of Employing Transportation Utility Fee: Need to Overlay Landmark Court Decisions on State-Level Determinants

Abstract

There is a growing interest nationwide in employing a transportation utility fee (TUF). The extant literature discusses ways to make TUF legally defensible by maintaining its fee-like features, so that it is not considered a tax. However, courts consider the context of state law while determining the legality of a TUF; hence, the need to consider the takeaways from landmark TUF-related court cases and state-specific determinants while designing a TUF program. The paper begins to fill this research gap by demonstrating how court decisions can be overlaid on state-specific determinants to identify a set of choices for levying TUF.