Poor, Out-of-Date State Gas Tax Policies Costing U.S. $130 Billion/Year, Study Finds

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gas tax report

QUICK NEWS: 50-state study finds U.S. states losing “over $10 billion in transportation revenue every year, contributing to an estimated $130 billion drain on the economy resulting from higher vehicle repair costs and travel time delays.”

More from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, which produced the report:

The report, Building a Better Gas Tax: How to Fix One of State Government’s Least Sustainable Revenue Sources shows that the average state has not increased its gas tax rate in over a decade, and fourteen states have gone twenty years or longer without an increase. As the cost of paving roads and building bridges rises, the tax that’s designed to pay for them keeps shrinking.

Adjusting for construction cost growth, the average state’s gasoline tax rate has effectively fallen by 20 percent, or 6.8 cents per gallon, since the last time it was raised. Diesel taxes have fallen by a similar 18 percent, or 6.0 cents per gallon.

Building a Better Gas Tax offers three policy recommendations for modernizing state gas taxes:

1. Increase gas tax rates to (at least) reverse their long term declines.

2. Restructure state gas taxes so that their rates rise automatically alongside the inevitable growth in the cost of transportation construction projects.

3. Create or enhance targeted tax credits for low income families to offset the impact of gas tax reform.

Full Report, with 50-State Data in the Appendix

Executive Summary with Key Findings

Press Release


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Zachary Shahan

Zach is tryin' to help society help itself one word at a time. He spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as its director, chief editor, and CEO. Zach is recognized globally as an electric vehicle, solar energy, and energy storage expert. He has presented about cleantech at conferences in India, the UAE, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, the USA, Canada, and Curaçao. Zach has long-term investments in Tesla [TSLA], NIO [NIO], Xpeng [XPEV], Ford [F], ChargePoint [CHPT], Amazon [AMZN], Piedmont Lithium [PLL], Lithium Americas [LAC], Albemarle Corporation [ALB], Nouveau Monde Graphite [NMGRF], Talon Metals [TLOFF], Arclight Clean Transition Corp [ACTC], and Starbucks [SBUX]. But he does not offer (explicitly or implicitly) investment advice of any sort.

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