If you live on Oahu, eight years from now you are likely to get a small raise. You will have slightly more money to spend after Dec. 31, 2022.

That increase comes because the Oahu mass transit general excise tax surcharge is set to drop dead at the end of 2022.

Back in 2005 the state and the Honolulu City Council voted to increase the GET by 12.5 percent, from 4 to 4.5 percent. The money would be Honolulu’s share of building the elevated rail line running from Kapolei to Ala Moana.

For those prone to grumbling about government inefficiency, the GET would not be something to hold up as an example.

That extra half of 1 percent has been one busy little tax increase.

City officials estimate that by the end of 2022, the tax increase will have garnered $3.68 billion. That is about $3,860 for each of the 953,000 people living on Oahu today.

Back in 2006, when the tax was under discussion, the late Lowell Kalapa, president of the Tax Foundation of Hawaii, said the increase for the train would set a record.

"The biggest tax increase has yet to kick in, the half of 1 percent county surcharge for Honolulu’s mass transit system will represent the largest tax increase since all tax rates were increased across the board in 1965," Kalapa said.

Until the tax ends, the Legislature could do some nibbling around the edges to change up where the money goes.

First, there has been a constant complaint that the state takes too money to manage and collect that tax. While there have been estimates that it should only take 2 to 3 percent to collect the extra GET on Oahu, when the state wrote the take increase law, the state grabbed 10 percent as the cost of collection.

The counties have suggested that they or at least Oahu should get some of that tax collection vigorish.

Of course, that’s not what the City and County of Ho-nolulu really wants.

Honolulu doesn’t want the tax to leave. Like true love, the tax should be forever. The city says the tax should be permanent.

The forever tax would be to operate the train.

Last week Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell was on PBS Hawaii’s "Insights" show with the other county mayors, who all were making the pitch that the counties should get more money from the state.

Caldwell’s rationale was not the usual, "We need more money, because we don’t have enough money and my constituents need new things."

Caldwell reasoned that the other counties should be able to raise the GET and then take a portion of it for county operations, and if the other counties can do that, it is only fair that the city keep its existing surcharge.

"If we are going to have to take the political hits of raising a tax, we want it in perpetuity," Caldwell said.

"If the other counties are going to get it in perpetuity, I think Oahu should have that equality."

Honolulu’s forever tax would go to help run the train, Caldwell said, because public transportation is always subsidized.

"We would use it to help subsidize the public transportation system. If you charge the real rate, people wouldn’t ride it because they couldn’t afford to ride it," Caldwell said.

Down the road, Caldwell added, the forever tax would then go to help build a rail line to the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Until then, remember Dec. 31, 2022.

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Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach him at rborreca@staradvertiser.com.