There are real issues commming down the pike for gas taxes. If you use the taxes for roads, hybrids will start eating in to road maintenance budgets. I'd like to see the red states come up to the blue state levels. Gas marketing, seems to erase the gas tax, in that the price that consumers pay is about the same, if you are in a high or low tax state.
The gas tax is by its nature an unfair, regressive tax. That is poor and rich pay the same. The state tax system looks really hard to get a handle on since everyone is making their own rules.
The following list is sorted by the highest to lowest paying states. PM me if you want this in an excel file with the notes from the pdf. All data here is from
http://api-ec.api.org/filelibrary/mft010106.pdf.
State "Gasoline(cpg)" "Diesel (cpg)"
Wisconsin* 32.9 32.9
Pennsylvania 32.3 39.2
Washington 31 31
Rhode Island 30 30
North Carolina* 29.9 29.8
Ohio 28 28
Montana 27.75 28.5
Nebraska* 26.1 26.1
Maine 25.9 27
Connecticut* 25 26
Idaho 25 25
Utah 24.5 24.5
New York 24.25 22.5
Kansas 24 26
Oregon 24 24
Maryland 23.5 24.25
Massachusetts 23.5 23.5
Delaware 23 22
Nevada 23 27
North Dakota 23 23
Colorado 22 20.5
South Dakota 22 22
Arkansas 21.5 22.5
Iowa 20.7 22.5
West Virginia 20.5 20.5
D.C. 20 20
Louisiana 20 20
Minnesota 20 20
Tennessee 20 18
Texas 20 20
Vermont 20 26
Illinois 19 21.5
Michigan 19 15
Kentucky* 18.5 13.1
Alabama 18 19
Arizona 18 18
California 18 18
Indiana 18 16
Mississippi 18 18
New Hampshire 18 18
Virginia 17.5 16
Missouri 17 17
New Mexico 17 18
Hawaii 16 16
Oklahoma 16 13
South Carolina 16 16
Florida* 14.5 27.3
New Jersey 14.5 17.5
Wyoming 14 14
Alaska 8 8
Georgia 7.5 7.5