The new year will bring a new Oregon Legislature, and there are already discussions for new taxes.

There might be a new tax on tires. Other options are a new tax on the sale, lease and rental of off-road equipment; a new tax on new heavy trucks; and a new tax on diesel fuel used off-road. A legislative task force is set to discuss options on Thursday, Dec. 3.

It is for a good cause. Legislators are looking at these options to bring in money to provide incentives to help businesses reduce diesel emissions and get cleaner air. Waiting around for businesses to slowly adopt cleaner vehicles was believed to be happening too slowly. So legislators have been looking at ways to help vehicles burn cleaner fuel, burn less or just burn cleaner.

The Legislature also won’t necessarily move forward with all these taxes. It may just pick one. It might well be a tire tax.

There’s already a federal tax on tires and many states tax them, too. The state taxes can be about $1 per tire. West Virginia apparently charges the most at $5 per tire.

The idea in Oregon might be to charge the tax and use the revenue to help with recycling tires, and also put money into a fund to provide incentives to help businesses move to cleaner vehicles. That’s basically what California already does. In Oregon, the Legislative Revenue Office estimates the annual average revenue from a surcharge of a $1 per tire would be about $3.1 million, growing with population growth.

The argument for a tire tax is that it is related to the goal of reducing damage to roads and also reducing diesel emissions. Arguments against are pretty much the traditional against any new tax — the industry is already taxed in other ways and it just raises costs to consumers. There is also a fairly unique “equity” argument that there is no equivalent tax on railroads or transportation using waterways.

If the Legislature does move forward with a tire tax, legislators should require it be clearly labeled as a tax. Consumers should see it when they make their purchase. Legislators crafted Oregon’s $1 billion annual gross receipts tax to conceal the cost from consumers. Don’t do that with a tire tax.