On my way to work I pass a dozen or so gas stations, each advertising their price per gallon for gas; normally I ignore them, knowing that the Costco a mile or two from my house will have the cheapest price.
But from time to time I hear folks talking about how expensive gas is here in Washington, I usually bite my tong when these conversations come up as we pas so much less for gas that other parts of the world (Denmark pays $8.32 a gallon, most of which is taxes).
Last time I filled up (at Costco) I paid $2.95 a gallon, several multiples of what I remember paying just a decade ago but that doesn't bother me much when its put in context with the world but when you look into it you find Washington has the 3rd highest taxes on gas in the United States.
Today we pay .34c a gallon and in July it goes up to .36c a gallon; at today's price that 8.68% taxes per gallon.
I don't really have a problem with that either but I do think most people don't understand that this is the case; this is if nothing else attributable to the fact that your gas receipt (at least in Washington) doesn't disclose how much taxes are involved in that "per gallon" charge.
With a 15 gallon tank the current prices mean I pay $44.25 a tank, that's $5.10 a tank in taxes; not a huge amount; if nothing else it just seems wrong that when I buy something in a retail store I see the taxes involved but when I buy gas I don't.
One reason this level of visibility is important is that we are constantly being presented with new taxes for "road infrastructure" that's outside the "gas tax", I think folks would be better prepared to make informed decisions on these things if they knew what they were already paying (according to WikiAnswers the national average for miles per year is 12,000 that's $4080 a year in "gas taxes") (The national average for miles per year is 12,000 miles, at about 22 average mpg highway, that's about 546 gallons, and at 36 cents each gallon that's $197 a year in "gas taxes").
[Edited 2/20/2008] OK, so looks like I should not blog when I am half asleep; I have edited the above statement to be acurate, thanks Frank.
If gas receipts contained the amount of taxes paid per visit, folks would have one more piece of information to take into consideration when asked to approve some new boondoggle (like the replacement of the Seattle viaduct).
Well I guess thats my .36c.