Pumping Your Money Away

     I want to write about one of the most alarming taxes that we are all paying, in one way or another. That is the gasoline tax, or I should say taxes, because there are a lot. Every time you put gas in your car you are dishing out oodles of taxes. Every time you take a bus, taxi, plane, etc., your fare is higher because of taxes. Every time you buy anything from any store you are paying a higher price because of taxes. Every time you receive a package by any shipping company you are paying a higher price because of taxes. So like I stated before, everyone is paying those taxes. And because of sales taxes, you are essentially paying taxes on top of taxes! And if you live in Cook County, especially in the city of Chicago, you are paying multiple layers of taxes!
     Taxes make up about one-fourth of the gasoline price! Many of the citizens of Illinois are paying  much more than that. Illinois consumers pay from about 58 cents to 80 cents per gallon in taxes, depending on where they live. You are paying at least 58 cents for every gallon of gas you pump, in taxes! That is alarming.
     Let me break that down per gallon: Federal taxes - 18.4 cents, Illinois motor fuel tax - about 19 cents, underground storage tank tax - .3 cents, environmental impact tax - 1.1 cents, state sales tax - 5% or about 18 cents and local sales tax 2% or about 7 cents. The sales taxes paid are on the current price of the gasoline, so if the price goes up, so do your taxes, automatically! If the current price of gas is $3.50, then you are paying about 63 cents in taxes with every gallon. If the gas is $4.00, then you are paying about 67 cents per gallon! That is why taxes are spread out to make them seem that they are not too much. Could you imagine letting everyone know you are paying 60 - 80 cents in tax with every gallon you pump? Or if you put 10 gallons in your tank at $6 - $8 in taxes? More people would be upset. Did you  know that a law was passed stating that a gas station cannot give a pre-tax price or show how much is actually the tax? The government does not want you to know how much you're being taxed.
     Now for the numbers. Are you ready? In the U.S., there are about 140 billion gallons of gasoline consumed every year. That translates into over $25 billion dollars in federal taxes alone. In Illinois, about 6 billion gallons of gas are consumed each year. That is about $3,000,000,000 a year or roughly $8,000,000 in gasoline taxes collected every day! How is Illinois broke?! Bad management! 

---