This primer presents some promising and innovative mileage fee system designs and transition strategies. For states or localities that are considering a transition to mileage fees, awareness of these strategies can help determine whether shifting from fuel taxes to mileage fees merits further consideration. For jurisdictions already engaged in detailed assessments of mileage fees, these concepts can help reduce costs and build public support.

Technologies and Approaches to Reducing the Fuel Consumption of Medium- and Heavy-Duty Vehicles evaluates various technologies and methods that could improve the fuel economy of medium- and heavy-duty vehicles, such as tractor-trailers, transit buses, and work trucks. The book also recommends approaches that federal agencies could use to regulate these vehicles' fuel consumption. Currently there are no fuel consumption standards for such vehicles, which account for about 26 percent of the transportation fuel used in the U.S. The miles-per-gallon measure used to regulate the fuel economy of passenger cars. is not appropriate for medium- and heavy-duty vehicles, which are designed above all to carry loads efficiently. Instead, any regulation of medium- and heavy-duty vehicles should use a metric that reflects the efficiency with which a vehicle moves goods or passengers, such as gallons per ton-mile, a unit that reflects the amount of fuel a vehicle would use to carry a ton of goods one mile. This is called load-specific fuel consumption (LSFC). The book estimates the improvements that various technologies could achieve over the next decade in seven vehicle types. For example, using advanced diesel engines in tractor-trailers could lower their fuel consumption by up to 20 percent by 2020, and improved aerodynamics could yield an 11 percent reduction. Hybrid powertrains could lower the fuel consumption of vehicles that stop frequently, such as garbage trucks and transit buses, by as much 35 percent in the same time frame.

Several Members of Congress and public interest groups have recently proposed policies that would reduce gasoline consumption in the United States. Such proposals stem primarily from a desire to enhance the nation's energy security and to decrease its emissions of carbon dioxide, a key greenhouse gas that affects the Earth's climate. This book compares three methods of reducing gasoline consumption: increasing the corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards that govern passenger vehicles, raising the federal tax on gasoline, and setting a limit on carbon emissions from gasoline combustion and requiring gasoline producers to hold allowances for those emissions (a policy known as a cap-and-trade program). Also, the book weighs the relative merits of those policies against several major criteria: whether they would minimise costs to producers and consumers; how reliably they would achieve a given reduction in gasoline use; their implications for automobile safety; and their effects on such factors as traffic congestion, requirements for highway construction, and emissions of air pollutants other than carbon dioxide. In addition, the book examines two more policy implications that lawmakers may be concerned about: the impact on people at different income levels and in different regions, and the effects on federal revenue.

Employer's Tax Guide (Circular E) - The Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA), enacted on March 18, 2020, and amended by the COVID-related Tax Relief Act of 2020, provides certain employers with tax credits that reimburse them for the cost of providing paid sick and family leave wages to their employees for leave related to COVID‐19. Qualified sick and family leave wages and the related credits for qualified sick and family leave wages are only reported on employment tax returns with respect to wages paid for leave taken in quarters beginning after March 31, 2020, and before April 1, 2021, unless extended by future legislation. If you paid qualified sick and family leave wages in 2021 for 2020 leave, you will claim the credit on your 2021 employment tax return. Under the FFCRA, certain employers with fewer than 500 employees provide paid sick and fam-ily leave to employees unable to work or telework. The FFCRA required such employers to provide leave to such employees after March 31, 2020, and before January 1, 2021. Publication 15 (For use in 2021)