this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
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They're not referring to the federal road tax , but the $0.009 in the price.
The US actually has a legal denomination that is 1/10 of a cent, called a mill. It's 1/1000 of a dollar. It's very rarely used, and was never actually minted. The closest we had were 1/2 cent coins (5 mills), but those were short lived coin denominations in the 1700's.
So, why do gas stores get to use mills in their prices? I don't know, but I'm sure they do it either for a legal reason that outdated, because they get to derive extra profit per transaction, or because it's an extreme form of the ยข99 advertising trick.
In any of those cases it's really annoying.
Well the federal gas tax is 18.4 cents per gallon, and the state gas tax where I am is 28.5 cents per gallon, for a total of 46.9 cents per gallon, that's where the $0.009 comes from.
It mattered a lot 100 years ago when gas was like 5.5 cents a gallon.