New bikes on the showroom at Trek Bicycle Store. (Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)
The amount of revenue collected by the State of Oregon from the bicycle excise tax was over $1 million for the first time ever in 2022. And the total amount of new bikes sold in the state have returned to pre-pandemic levels.
Those are two insights we can glean from Oregon Department of Revenue data that has been kept since the bike tax went into effect on January 1st, 2018.
The bike tax was a part of House Bill 2017, the landmark, $5.3 billion transportation package passed by the Oregon Legislature in 2017. In addition to funding projects like freeway expansion megaprojects, rural transit systems, and Safe Routes to Schools infrastructure, the bill included a bevy of new fees to begin the Oregon Department of Transportation’s transition away from the withering gas tax. Vehicle registrations went up, car dealerships had to pay a new “privilege tax” (0.5% on the retail price of any taxable car or truck sold in Oregon), and bicycle riders were dinged $15 at the register for each new bike purchased. The tax applies to bikes priced $200 or more.
BikePortland last took a look at the numbers about two years ago and requested the latest figures from the Department of Revenue.
In addition to annual bike tax receipts, DOR gave us our first-ever quarter-by-quarter breakdown of (reported) new bike sales in the state. These numbers illustrate the huge impact of the Covid lockdown-induced bike boom. Oregon’s Covid emergency declaration was made on March 8th, 2020. The first quarter after that declaration we see a huge spike in bike sales and the highest total we’ve seen since.
In Q2 of 2020, the state recorded 27,695 new bike sales, that’s nearly double the 16,073 bikes sold in Q2 of 2019. The total number of new bikes sold in 2020, 2021, and 2022 was around 60,000 bikes. Last year sales decreased by about 33%, to 44,175 bikes — an amount nearly identical to the two pre-pandemic years.
The 2022 tax receipts of $1.2 million fell by about half last year to just $776,000, or about the same as the 2019 amount. One interesting takeaway from the 2022 receipts total is that it’s exactly what state economists estimated when they pitched the tax to lawmakers in 2017. (Note: I’m not sure why the number of bikes sold in 2022 was lower than other years, but the tax receipts were higher. I’ve asked DOR and will update when I hear back.)
Proceeds from the bike tax go into the Oregon Community Paths program. OCP is administered by ODOT and it funds grants for, “project development, construction, reconstruction, major resurfacing or other improvements of multiuse paths that improve access and safety for people walking and bicycling.”
