Taxes of any kind are unpopular, and a gasoline tax poses some special problems.
Finally, the gasoline tax incurs the least cost because it elicits responses on several fronts.
The bulk of Highway Trust Fund revenue comes from an 18.4-cents-a-gallon federal gasoline tax.
The region's voters recently defeated by 89 percent a proposal to make up the deficit through a gasoline tax.
He says that he would give a temporary break in the gasoline tax.
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President Bush on Thursday urged caution on a proposal to raise the federal gasoline tax to repair the nation's bridges.
Other tax breaks and subsidies, including gasoline tax breaks for big oil companies, are likely to be approaching their swan song.
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Plus, of course, a gasoline tax does bring in some tax revenue.
People in states with a higher gasoline tax can actually come out ahead financially, said Patrick Anderson, a Michigan economist and limited-government proponent.
Pennsylvania Republican Gov. Tom Corbett has called for increasing a wholesale gasoline tax, with most or all of the increase passed to drivers.
And a gasoline tax would be regressive, falling disproportionately on low-income people, many of whom rely on their cars to get to work.
In Washington State, for example, a county and several cities sued a group pushing for repeal of a 2005 increase in the state gasoline tax.
Will you commit now or will the President commit to rejecting the suggestions of the debt commission if they include a 15-cent per gallon increase on the gasoline tax?
He said he and his son calculated how much they pay in taxes -- federal income tax, federal payroll tax, state income tax, state sales tax, state property tax, gasoline tax.
In Virginia, GOP Gov. Bob McDonnell recently won approval for overhauling his state's highway maintenance system by raising diesel and retail sales taxes and creating a mechanism for a potential future gasoline tax hike.
When the question before the Congress and the country is not whether to increase taxes but instead which taxes to increase, a gasoline tax will look, if not good, then less bad than the alternatives.
He has proposed boosting the gasoline tax from 19 cents to 33 cents a gallon and hiking car license plate fees by 60 percent, firmly grabbing what many politicians consider a third rail for consumers gasoline prices.
This would not come about for some time, however, and in the interim a higher gasoline tax should be accompanied by some form of rebate or tax relief for those of limited means whom it would injure most.
That bill would increase the general aviation jet fuel tax from 21.8 cents per gallon to 30.7 cents per gallon and would raise the general aviation gasoline tax from 19.3 cents per gallon to 24.1 cents per gallon.
Nevertheless, Japan is in the process of enacting a new array of tax increases: The top income tax rate, the gasoline tax, the payroll tax, the inheritance tax and the capital gains tax are all slated to go up.
If China eventually uses as much oil on a per capita basis as crowded, good-mass transit-having, high gasoline tax Western Europe, it will come to between 26 million bpd and 30 million bpd, an increase of between 18 million bpd and 22 million bpd.
Tax gasoline to induce people to live closer to work and to buy more fuel-efficient cars.
We have a much bigger country than do the Europeans and Japanese, who tax gasoline far more heavily than we do.
And the government needed to tax gasoline more to create higher prices and force the auto manufacturers to build more efficient cars.
And if we add in other federal taxes, such as the federal excise tax on gasoline, the numbers come down even further.
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While such a breakthrough may come eventually, a tax on gasoline that reduces consumption is a far more dependable way to reduce transportation externalities.
In addition, a tax on gasoline helps increase consumer demand for electric cars and seems likely to help the needed technological breakthroughs come even faster.
With Americans driving less, the federal flat tax on gasoline of 18.4 cents per gallon is bringing in fewer dollars and starving the federal highway fund.
But using a tax to reduce gasoline demand has never proven politically feasible in the United States.
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