A gasoline tax by any other name is still a tax on gasoline, isn’t it? That’s the question the governors of a dozen Northeastern states are attempting to avoid by implementing what is effectively a new gas tax on consumers via a regional “cap and trade” system.
The concept at hand in this regional gas tax scheme is similar to every other “cap and trade” system devised in any free economy, which involves the politicians trying to hide the tax from consumers by placing the point of taxation upstream, in this case with gasoline wholesalers. The Politico story linked above reveals that fact in the following paragraph:
