When it comes to car travel, Europe isn’t like us in at least two ways ‒ size and expense. Vehicles there are small and stingy on fuel because driving them is expensive. Fuel prices there are double or more the price in America.
The cost there may be softened by announcing fuel prices by liter, but converted to gallons ‒ 3.785 liters per gallon ‒ the price is an eye-opener. In Germany the recent price converted from the Euro (€) was $2.02 per liter. By the gallon, $7.65.
Trading Economics, which reports and analyzes economic data from nearly 200 countries, shows European gasoline prices in dollars. A liter in Denmark at $2.27 means a gallon for $8.59.
In Sweden, $6.55 per gallon. Among other prices: Switzerland, $7.87; France, $8.02; Norway, $8.10; United Kingdom, $7.19.
Think on it: In Paris, a 20- gallon fill ‒ not uncommon here ‒ would cost $160. In Copenhagen, $172. Stockholm, $131.
And taxes: The EU minimum tax is $1.36 per gallon (36 cents per liter) but in most countries it’s much higher. The Netherlands currently has the highest per-gallon tax at $3.10. Next are Italy ($2.76), Finland ($2.73), Greece ($2.65), France ($2.57) and Sweden ($2.54).
This is why Europeans drive small, if at all, and why ground transportation by rail or bus is common. Electric vehicles there are increasingly popular.
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The American discussion of switching from internal combustion to battery-powered vehicles has been vague on how to pay for the monstrous number of charging stations needed to refuel them. The $1.2 trillion American infrastructure program takes in a lot ‒ highways, bridges, airports, railroads, locks and dams, tech, telecommunications. It includes $550 billion for new programs and ought to kick in for technical training to repair and service electric vehicles.
Meanwhile the federal tax on gasoline lies dormant. Tying higher gas taxes to infrastructure programs is logical, but in today’s Congress it’s a non-starter. There are notions that the federal gasoline tax could provide at least partial funding for improvements. Each time the idea is floated it is quickly stifled in Congress and a White House scrambles to reassure us that it did not plan to ask for a federal gas tax increase to pay for a president’s idea.
In recent decades, inflation has severely weakened the purchasing power of the fuel tax. Construction and maintenance costs are up, vehicles are more fuel-efficient. A tax tied to inflation would rise with the cost of doing business. It would likely prompt the matter of state tax increases to share the costs.
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The current federal gasoline tax is 18.4 cents per gallon; the federal tax on diesel fuel is 24.4 cents. The federal taxes have not been increased since 1993.
The Kansas tax on gasoline is 24.03 cents and 26.03 on diesel – last raised a penny each, in 2004. (Total state-federal tax on gasoline in Kansas is 42.8 cents per gallon, and 50.4 cents for diesel).
In 1990, when the Kansas tax was raised from 11 to 15 cents, the state began a series of further increases. Each year it increased a penny until 1993 (18 cents for gas, 20 cents for diesel). This was to help finance two massive highway improvements projects ($11 billion and $14 billion) in Kansas enacted in the late 1980s and mid-1990s. Federal money also was involved.
Kansas gas and diesel taxes raise roughly $900 million per year – $90 million for every nickel in taxes – for the state highway fund.
Federal fuel taxes raise $62 billion, which goes to the federal highway trust fund and is allocated to states.
Since 1993 the federal tax has stayed still; Kansas fuel taxes increased 33 percent between 1993 and 2004.
Cheap fuel is no incentive to go green in America. In this era of strident political divide, necessity has little to do with the value of a federal program, or plans to shore up a frayed infrastructure. Or have electric vehicles.
