Car accidents aren’t something anybody likes dealing with. Auto insurance deductibles could be costly. The physical repercussions can be anything from annoying to disabling. If that isn’t an unpleasant enough contemplation, there is something else to make it worse. Emergency service departments are using it nationwide. It’s called a crash tax. You obtain a bill, and a large one, if you receive in an auto crash away from your home area if EMS even shows up to talk to you.
No ‘crash tax’ involves the dialogue of fault
The ‘crash tax’ is not complicated. If a person, outside the tax jurisdiction he or she lives in gets in an incident and is checked out by emergency services – even without asking – that person gets a bill for it. The bill is often never gargantuan, but is far from being innocuous. Typically, it appears to be a couple of hundred dollars. New York Times reports that one crash tax bill recipient was billed $200, and a Chicago Tribune piece profiled a woman who received a bill for $350. Neither asked to be checked out by emergency personnel or needed to go to a hospital.
It isn’t everywhere you go to date
Several states have banned the practice, though they are a minority. So far, Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Tennessee, as outlined by Injuryboard.com, have banned a crash tax. The law is almost always created at the municipal level. The practice, also called “resource recovery,” is used to get funds back from individuals that needed emergency services however didn’t pay taxes in that area. Currently, municipalities in 24 states have the crash tax, and fees are especially steep in California.
Even Warren Buffet’s insurance doesn’t include it
Individuals are billed regardless if they tell EMS they do not need assistance. Insurance will not include the bill in that case. Insurance businesses and many other organizations oppose it.
Additional reading
NY Times
nytimes.com/2010/09/05/automobiles/05CRASHTAX.html?pagewanted=1 and _r=1 and ref=automobiles
Chicago Tribune
articles.chicagotribune.com/2010-03-02/business/ct-biz-0302-problem-locklin-20100302_1_billing-ambulance-services-emergency
Sacramento Injury Board
sacramento.injuryboard.com/automobile-accidents/can-crash-tax-help-to-reduce-the-rate-of-accidents.aspx?googleid=284322
