With average nationwide gasoline prices above $4.50 a gallon, politicians are revisiting a perennial idea to ease high pump prices: suspending the federal gasoline tax.
President Donald Trump said he wants to suspend the tax, which is 18.4 cents per gallon for gasoline and 24.4 cents per gallon for diesel fuel.
“It’s a small percentage, but it’s, you know, it’s still money,” Trump told reporters May 11.
Gasoline prices have neared record highs since Trump started a war with Iran in February. Iran countered by blocking the Strait of Hormuz, normally the transit route for about one-fifth of the world’s crude oil.
Then-President Joe Biden last suggested suspending the gasoline tax during the previous peak for gas prices in 2022, after Russia invaded Ukraine and western nations sanctioned Russian oil, reducing international supply.
But such a hiatus, which would need congressional approval, has never been implemented, in part because of significant drawbacks, including shortchanging federal highway projects.
Suspending the tax would threaten highway projects
A suspension would mean losing federal revenue designated for the Highway Trust Fund, which covers the costs of highway maintenance and expansion.
Federal gasoline tax revenue is estimated at $30 billion annually through 2036, and diesel tax revenue is projected to bring in about $11 billion a year, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a group that tracks federal fiscal policy.
At current spending rates, without a suspension, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service projects the trust fund will run out of money by 2028. A suspension of the tax would accelerate that timeline.
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that a one-month suspension of the gasoline and diesel taxes would deprive the government of $3.5 billion in revenue; a six-month suspension would total about $21 billion; and a three-year suspension would total $124 billion.
Inflation has already undermined the spending power of the Highway Trust Fund over the past three decades. The gasoline tax hasn’t changed since 1993, and taking inflation into account, it has lost almost half its value since then, according to the Tax Foundation, a group that tracks tax policy.
Some Republicans, including Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, said they plan to introduce bills to suspend the taxes. On the Democratic side. Sens. Mark Kelly of Arizona and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, and Rep. Chris Pappas of New Hampshire, have also called for a suspension, but they propose offsetting the revenue losses with general funds, which would increase the federal deficit.
Criticisms of suspending the gasoline tax
Because the federal gasoline tax is relatively modest, eliminating it would reduce current average gas prices to about $4.32 a gallon, still a historically high level.
“For a 10-gallon fill-up, that’s $1.84 saved,” Clark Williams-Derry, an energy finance analyst with the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, told PolitiFact in 2022. “That’s not nothing, but also not much of a dent in a family budget.”
Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis for the gasoline price tracker GasBuddy, estimates that it would take 13 months of a suspended federal gasoline tax for consumers to recoup the Iran war price increases that have accumulated to date.
Critics also say that if you lower the price of gasoline, people are more likely to increase their driving. This could raise demand during a time of lower supply, which in turn could raise prices and limit consumers’ savings from the tax suspension.
It’s also possible that instead of consumers reaping the savings from a tax suspension, the oil industry could benefit. Because the tax is collected at the refinery — before it gets to the consumer — there’s no guarantee that the oil company will pass the full benefits of a tax suspension on to consumers.
What about the state gasoline taxes?
Each state levies its own taxes on gasoline and diesel, and some also add sales taxes. In recent weeks, a few states, including Indiana and Georgia, have suspended their state gasoline and diesel taxes; others are considering it. Several states enacted suspensions in 2022.
In many cases, the state taxes are larger than the federal tax. This means the benefits of a suspension to consumers would be bigger — but the drawbacks would be too.
“A state-level gas tax holiday would have a larger effect on gas prices than a federal tax holiday almost everywhere,” Hugh Daigle, a University of Texas at Austin petroleum and geosystems engineering professor, told us in 2022.
