Skip to footer

Will Georgia get rid of $5,000 tax credit for purchasing an electric car?

A bill to eliminate Georgia's $5,000 tax credit for purchasing a battery-electric vehicle didn't pass this year. Could the bill resurface – and succeed – in 2015?

|
David Goldman/AP/File
Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal, right, looks at a Chevy Spark, an electric vehicle on display at a news conference, in Atlanta, Jan. 10, 2013. A bill to eliminate Georgia's $5,000 tax credit for purchasing a battery-electric vehicle didn't pass this year, but it may resurface next year.

Early this year, we wrote about efforts in the Georgia state legislature to kill the state's $5,000 income-tax credit for purchasing a battery-electric vehicle.

Among the most generous state incentives in the nation, Georgia's credit has put the metropolitan Atlanta area among the top areas where electric cars are sold and widely used.

While this year's effort to kill the $5,000 credit didn't succeed, electric-car advocate Chris Campbell suggests to Green Car Reports that there will be a renewed effort again next year.

On March 20, the last day of this year's legislative session in the state, the bill to eliminate the credit – HB 257 – died after a conference committee was unable to agree on language acceptable to both the George state House and Senate – each of which had amended its provisions.

The next legislative session opens in January 2015 and, Campbell says, "I guarantee that the credit will get killed, or heavily modified, in the next session."

It could be as early as January, he suggests, or as late as April.

But the total cost of the credit – now in the tens of millions of dollars in foregone tax revenue – is perceived as too high, he said, and there will be increasing support to reduce or simply eliminate the incentive.

Several thousand electric vehicles have now been sold in Georgia, and the state was ranked fourth in overall electric-car registrations for 2013.

Nissan routinely names the greater Atlanta area as one of its strongest regions for sales of the Nissan Leaf battery-electric car, now built in Smyrna, Tennessee.

What's the takeaway?

"I tell people that if they've been on the fence about a pure electric car," Campbell urges, "then they need to get it done by the end of this year, because that $5,000 is going to come off the table early next year."

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Will Georgia get rid of $5,000 tax credit for purchasing an electric car?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/In-Gear/2014/0626/Will-Georgia-get-rid-of-5-000-tax-credit-for-purchasing-an-electric-car
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe