Tax time for frontier fishermen.

AuthorGay, Joel
PositionAlaskan fishermen and those who fish in Alaskan waters

Two controversial commercial fishing taxes will pour a little sea bounty into state coffers.

Commercial fishermen who enjoy the bounty of Alaska's waters will have to pay more for it after the Alaska Legislature approved a pair of new taxes last spring. One tax is aimed at the hundreds of factory vessels working in the 200-mile zone of federal waters off the state's coast and will charge them for community services they receive but never before purchased. The other tax targets salmon fishermen and pays for increased domestic marketing of their product. Combined, the levies will tap fishermen for nearly $15 million every year. While most of the money is dedicated for services they already get -- such as dock fees, water and garbage disposal -- the two new taxes will swell the Alaska treasury by several million dollars annually.

New Trawler Tax

The Seattle-based offshore fleet of factory trawlers, freezer longliners and crab catcher-processors lands about $1 billion worth of pollock, cod and shellfish from the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska every year. Technically, those resources belong to the United States and not to Alaska. But state politicians and community leaders have long contended that the fleet should contribute more to state coffers.

"The fact is, the offshore fleet impacts Alaska's coastal communities," says assistant commissioner of revenue Rod Mourant. "It causes them to have larger than normal police forces, hospital facilities, waste disposal, and there ought to be a way for those communities to mollify that impact."

Though that fleet buys groceries, fuel and services in Alaska, it doesn't pay the state's 5 percent raw fish tax because it doesn't deliver its catch to Alaska's shore. On the other hand, the small boat fleet that delivers to shoreside processing plants in Dutch Harbor, Kodiak and elsewhere is tapped for 5 percent every delivery.

This disproportionate taxation set the stage for the biggest rift ever to hit the American fishing industry, known as the inshore/offshore allocation ("Groundfish War Heats Up in North Pacific," Alaska Business Monthly, August 1992, Pg. 48). But even after the shoreside industry won a fixed percentage of the pollock and cod quotas, it didn't "level the playing field," according to the pro-Alaska forces, because shoreside fishermen still paid the raw fish tax while factory vessels "fished free."

Offshore Fleet Must Pay

Rather than eliminate the raw fish tax, the legislature imposed a 3.3...

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