The Harbor Maintenance Tax

 The Harbor Maintenance Tax bill is faced with the problem of obligation to pay its tax on domestic shipping. This is due to comparison between its collected amount with private and external profits achieved by short-sea intermodal procedure. The only money contributed by the domestic movement is about one point seven to one point nine million dollars in total to the eight hundred and eighty million dollars of Harbor Maintenance Tax.

Short sea Shipping refers to the water transportation of cargo and travelers that does not cross an ocean. The Short Shipping Cooperative is a program that resulted from a suggestion that came out of a set of industry advices from the First Annual Short Sea Shipping Conference which was held in New York in the year 2002. Its intention is to offer a debate for labor, government, industry and others to share possessions and in-kind services in the expansion of short sea shipping in North America. Another goal is to carry out outreach efforts to future users of a North American Short Sea Shipping System (Adams, 2005). The cooperative is sponsored by the Marine Administration (MARAD) which hosted an idea forum on creating a cooperative in on 23^rd of July in 2003. In the cooperative, members pay annual offer in-kind, dues and other services for the improvement of short sea shipping. Among the 115 industry participants that attended the event, 38 offered financial support right away while 23 volunteered to serve on a steering meeting to outline by-laws and proposed a leadership organization with a center of attention on the marine society.

The Short Sea Shipping industry however has various impacts on international transportation. The growth of international freight quantities and America’s transportation infrastructure capacity pressed on land, the growth of us marine highway system would be able to offer an extra competent and environmentally sound transportation alternative (Blank, & Cairns, 2008).

The short sea shipping establishment will also make landside crowding ease and generate new employment opportunities in the longshore business. It does away with major obstructions to the expansion of the system by excusing waterborne transporting of freight between US ports from the Harbor Maintenance Tax. Some of the Short sea shipping benefits include boosting the economy whereby the ports supply hundreds and thousands of direct and indirect employment opportunities as well as creating billions of dollars in the economic and tax income.

Uncountable containers from all over globe reach at the harbors and move through the ports on trucks and rail to their final end. The industry will also fill serious security spaces in the cargo delivery sequence by setting up new minimum protection standards and procedures for containers towards the inside the US. The industry will also need cargo to be watched over through the whole cargo delivery series from the spot of and time the container is loaded until its arrival in the US. It would require that all port sections to have in place a response and revival plan in incident of terrorist strike or crisis. It however has its own disadvantages. For instance, it is only a few percentage of the containers can be sufficiently scanned for weapons of mass damage (Brooks, & Frost, 2004).

Some major members included Mr. John Tirpak of Saltchuk Resources for vice chair, Mr. Robert Kunkel of Apex Marine for chair, Mr. Joseph Cox of Chamber of Shipping of America for treasurer and Mr. Peter Shaerf of American Maritime Advisors for vice chair. The cooperative should however be optimistic to pursue endeavors that relate to short sea shipping to North America because improved awareness and application of sea shipping performances can reduce traffic overcrowding, advance safety and benefit the surroundings. 

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