Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, March 30, 1991                   TAG: 9103300123
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

U.S. PLANS BOATERS' `USER FEE'/ $25-TO-$100 TAX TO REDUCE DEFICIT

The Coast Guard has issued formal regulations spelling out how those owners will have to start paying a new "user fee" of $25 to $100 a year for the privilege of operating in navigable U.S. waters. Their boats will have to carry a decal certifying payment of the fee, which is expected to bring the government $718 million over five years.

The Coast Guard is considering selling the decals by mail, through boat docks and other public outlets. Sales are unlikely before July.

Congress, in enacting the fee last year as part of deficit-reduction legislation, decreed that the levy not apply to any boat of less than 16 feet in length. The Coast Guard expanded the exemption and excluded - regardless of length - any rowboat, canoe, kayak, sailboard, racing shell, rowing scull "and other recreational vessels propelled by oars, paddles, poles or sails attached to an unsupported mast." The fee also will not apply to lifeboats or foreign vessels.

As proposed rules published in the Federal Register make clear, this is not a user fee but a new tax.

Congress justified the fee by declaring that recreational boaters should share in the cost of such Coast Guard programs as search and rescue, boating safety and navigation aids.

Boats over 16 feet in length but less than 20 feet will be subject to a $25-a-year levy; those 20 feet or longer but less than 27 feet, $35; 27 feet but less than 40, $50, and those 40 feet and longer, $100.

In publishing the regulations, the Coast Guard asked public comment on the fee by May 13. If any boaters ask for a public hearing, one probably would be scheduled.