How Much Would A Gas Tax Raise?

We hear about the President’s proposal to raise $1.4-1.6 trillion in new taxes over a ten year period.  That is a lot of money, however, what if we raised the gas tax.  How much revenue would that raise over the same 10 year period. Right now we consume around 135 billion gallons of gasoline in a year and another 35 billion diesel gallons.

If we raised the federal tax rate for these fuels by a $1 per gallon we would raise about $1.7 trillion dollars over a 10 year period. The actual amount would be less due to certain exemptions and reduced usage with a higher tax but you can see this would raise more than what President Obama is proposing right now.

A 50 cent increase would raise almost a billon dollars over the same period.

I am not advocating this tax increase but it just points out how revenue we could raise from just one tax.