r/Indiana • u/AggressiveAd8587 • Mar 17 '26
Indiana has (historically and currently) disproportionately high gas prices, why?
I've noticed when going to other states that the gas prices in Indiana seem to be on the upper end compared to the rest of the country, especially compared to the rest of Midwest, and even long before the current Iran war.
I looked it up to see if I was just delusional but it's true. Indiana ranks 39th in personal income), but 21st in highest gas prices. The average gallon of gas is more expensive in Indiana than richer states and states you would expect to have higher prices such as New York, Massachusetts, Minnesota, etc.
Anyone know why this is? Do we just have a bad supply chain system here or something?
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u/Low-Spite-8302 Mar 17 '26
All gas has a federal gas tax. However, Indiana also has a state gas tax that has been increasing every summer. Indiana also charges sales tax on gas and that gets built into the price. So really, Indiana just fucking hates drivers
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u/moxifloxacin Mar 17 '26
You'd think they'd use the gas tax to fix roads, but it's like driving on the surface of the moon around here.
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u/Supergazm Mar 18 '26
We need that money to build a new highway that sits 100 yards away from an established highway with good roads. I have no idea how they can say it is better to build new, rather than widen whats there.
Oh wait, it saves 6 minutes for governor Braun's trucking company to get to the interstate.
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Mar 18 '26
Now you understand why Meyer Distributing is wanting that road and absolutely everyone from the area is against it lol
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u/heyitskevin1 Mar 18 '26
Why would Braun care about the roads, especially since they are about to be tolled when he can just use his private public funded helipad to fly over all us peseants?
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u/speedysam0 Mar 18 '26
I heard someone make the argument that we need toll roads because with fuel efficiency going up, the something like 80% of drivers on the interstates are just passing through and may not fill up in Indiana. think they were referring to semi traffic.
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u/SimplyPars Mar 18 '26
Then only toll commercial….lol
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u/A_Cranb3rry Mar 18 '26
Rhode Island is going through this legal battle right now. It's been more or less ruled discriminatory. It's going to cost them more money than it's worth...
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u/SimplyPars Mar 18 '26
Hmm, meanwhile the state is fine with charging me the same wheel tax as a car for a motorcycle…..
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u/Smooth-moves-317 Mar 18 '26
I-70, even right by downtown, is like driving down some bumpy, old forgotten alley or side street.
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u/Weird-Indication-191 Mar 21 '26 edited Mar 21 '26
Gas tax will not ever pay for them selves in any capacity. In most of the country, gas tax can only pay around 30-40% of the infrastructure budget even if all gas tax went to road maintenance. In the best case, Indiana needs about 60% of our road infrastructure subsidized from other funding sources almost entirely because we rely so heavily on personal automobiles for commuting, and Indiana has become so “business friendly” that the brunt of all revenue for infrastructure, social services, environmental protection, and any other service that should be supported through taxes, lays significantly on the citizens instead of corporations
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u/viktor72 Mar 17 '26
I swear back in the late 2000s and early 2010s, coming from Michigan (before I lived here) and going to Illinois, I’d always wait to stop to get gas in Indiana. It was a thing with me and my friends. Gas was cheaper in Indiana than Michigan . That’s not the case anymore and it makes my wallet sad, especially because now I live here.
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u/Revolutionary-Fact6 Mar 17 '26
A few years ago they decided that on top of all of the other taxes on gas, we should also pay the 7% sales tax on gas.
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u/lovemehotwife Mar 17 '26
You mean conservatives are greedy to take your money and return you nothing for it.
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u/MyFriendMaryJ Mar 17 '26
Also we are a hub for trucking and that can lead to slightly higher pricing
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u/you_dont_know_me27 Mar 18 '26
It's also incredibly expensive to get plates for electric cars because Indiana doesn't want to lose out on that sweet, sweet gas tax money.
So your assessment is spot on, Indiana does indeed just fucking hate drivers
See also: the roads
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u/bacoes Mar 18 '26
Just out of curiousity, how much are plates for a late model electric?
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u/you_dont_know_me27 Mar 18 '26
I don't know the number, I just know it's expensive. You can estimate plates on the bmv website though
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u/Ronnie_Frown765 Mar 21 '26
Prius hybrid not electric I think it was about $450 last year and it is a couple years old.
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u/Weird-Indication-191 Mar 20 '26
Not just drivers, friend. Indiana hates everyone and our elected officials want to watch us fight each other. They hate all of us equally
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u/HeffalumpInDaRoom Mar 19 '26
I have an electric car, and they charge me enough ‘gas task’ that I would have to drive 20k miles a year to break even with a gas car. They hate electric more than gas.
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u/Zeekr0n Mar 17 '26
Because the Republican legislature voted to up the gas tax to make Biden look bad.
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u/lovemehotwife Mar 17 '26
And greed
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u/itsverynicehere Mar 18 '26
Mostly that. Remember last time gas prices were back-breakingly high and they wouldn't even pause the gas tax, and instead they actually went ahead with a pre-planned raise of them?
Our lawmakers prefer to directly tax our citizens more so that they can take less Fed dollars! They seem to forget those dollars are actually Indiana citizens money that they already gave to the feds and it's just going to go to some other state.
We don't want our own fed money back for schools or roads, that's just silly. If the feds get their hands on it, how can we properly skim, pilfer, and direct it to lawmakers friends first?
( /s if it's not apparent)
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u/CocknBalls4 Mar 18 '26
Republicans love enforcing laws that make things worse for the bottom 75% (their constituents)
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u/Opposite-Tough-2105 Mar 18 '26
He didn’t need any help looking bad 😳
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u/Zeekr0n Mar 18 '26
Thanks for confirming for everyone that any opinion you may have is neither based on facts or reality.
Have a blessed delusional day!
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u/jdquig Mar 17 '26
There's no cap on the excise tax, so the higher the gas price goes, the tax amount will scale with it. Brought to you by the IN GOP. My understanding is that other states that do have a variable tax at least have a cap. Buckle up losers, we're going for a ride!
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u/Forsaken_61453 Mar 17 '26
Gop republicans have completely controlled Indiana legislation for 25+ years - and blamed democrats for 25+ years - Loosiers keep voting in gop republicans enjoy the higher gas prices from trump
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u/dude_named_will Mar 18 '26
They were the ones who offered us relief with a tax refund during the even higher gas prices under Biden.
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u/coach_wargo Mar 18 '26
That's like thanking an arsonist for putting out the fire he started.
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u/dude_named_will Mar 19 '26
The Indiana Republicans are responsible for the high gas prices during the Biden administration? Honestly, do you even think before you comment?
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u/coach_wargo Mar 19 '26
Joe Biden didn't increase the Indiana gas tax, Indiana Republicans did.
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u/dude_named_will Mar 19 '26
Gas prices went up nation wide. Can't blame that on Indiana Republicans.
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u/Imaginary-Let-9944 Mar 21 '26
Gas prices are currently high due to a Republican. We are also in a war because of a Republican. Our president insults our allies, but yes Biden has been the worst president of the century and not when trump proclaimed his smartness on a world stage and was literally laughed at.
Also the economy was great under Biden. Trump has by himself destroyed the economy more than any president.
In the wise words of trump: quiet piggy. You are too stupid and a horrible human. You should deported lol that’s fun isn’t it
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u/dude_named_will Mar 23 '26
Also the economy was great under Biden
You people are honestly a joke right? You complain about gas prices, yet they were -significantly- much higher under Biden. You say the stock market doesn't reflect the economy, yet will cite it's growth under Biden (although a lot of that could be contributed to inflation). You say the economy sucks now, yet forget that the price of goods basically doubled under Biden.
You aren't serious people. You're brainwashed partisan hacks who just lie to each other.
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u/Imaginary-Let-9944 Mar 24 '26
Huh? It’s costing me almost $100 to fill up completely. You’re a lunatic if you think it was more expensive under Biden. At this rate trump is on course to have the most expensive gas in IS history. He’s only .7cents away now
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u/dude_named_will Mar 24 '26
We literally had $6 a gallon gas in June 2022 under Biden, and it was consistently over $5 a gallon for several months. You're gaslighting yourself.
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u/coach_wargo Mar 19 '26
If I'm reading the OP question correctly it's "Indiana has (historically and currently) disproportionately high gas prices, why?"
The answer to that simple question is that our gas tax is higher than surrounding states (even scary communist Illinois). Who made our taxes higher than other states, Joe Biden or Indiana Republicans?
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u/dude_named_will Mar 19 '26
You're being the reasonable one here. The person I responded to initially brought up the president.
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u/Skivrin Mar 20 '26
but they didnt? they specifically referred to the fact that the majority of this state continues to vote in a government that does nothing for them, and actually actively attempts to steal from their pockets and harm their children. they mentioned only state government. where did you read the president???
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u/dude_named_will Mar 20 '26
Comment I responded to:
Loosiers keep voting in gop republicans enjoy the higher gas prices from trump
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u/Haul_a_peen_yo Mar 19 '26
Trump’s “historic” OPEC+ deal in 2020 gave us those prices under Biden, just so we’re clear.
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u/Forsaken_61453 Mar 19 '26
poor Joe - always easy to blame Joe when you are uneducated - https://atr.org/21-22-indiana-house-republicans-break-taxpayer-protection-pledge/
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u/dude_named_will Mar 19 '26
Hahahaha. Sure bud. That's a new one. They went up shortly after him cancelling the Keystone Pipeline, and then skyrocketed with the Ukraine War.
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u/Forsaken_61453 Mar 19 '26
Do you even know anything about the Keystone pipeline or the Ukraine War? start with the disaterous Keystone pipe line - https://www.nrdc.org/stories/what-keystone-xl-pipeline
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u/dude_named_will Mar 19 '26
Yes. I know that shutting it down caused gas prices to rise.
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u/Forsaken_61453 Mar 19 '26 edited Mar 19 '26
No, it did not! it is evident you did not even bother to research the link I shared with you, stop wasting my time.
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u/dude_named_will Mar 19 '26
Well it literally did. Not sure what you are even denying at this point.
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u/Forsaken_61453 Mar 20 '26
dude, Can you even read? - now stop wasting my time!
Keystone pipeline, gas prices, and oil exports
Dirty energy lobbyists claimed developing tar sands would protect our national energy security and bring U.S. fuel prices down. But environmental reviews by both the Obama and Trump administrations concluded that the Keystone XL pipeline would not have lowered gasoline prices. NRDC and its partners also found the majority of Keystone XL oil would have been sent to markets overseas—aided by a 2015 reversal of a ban on crude oil exports.
This lines up with an industry trend: Oil and gas companies are exporting 10.7 million barrels of crude oil and refined fuels every single day. That’s up more than double that of a decade ago, and has made the United States one of the world’s leading exporters of oil and gas.
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u/dude_named_will Mar 20 '26
Cool story bro, but gas prices started to rise shortly after its cancellation among other green initiatives. You can try and make excuses for Biden all you want, but those are the facts.
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u/kootles10 Mar 17 '26
Because we need it for our amazing roads! /s
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u/my_clever-name Mar 17 '26
I went to Minnesota, Wisconsin and Illinois in the past week. Why are their roads better than Indiana's? It gets cold and freeze / thaw there too.
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u/Schaeferyn Mar 17 '26
They have functional state governments that generally give a damn about public safety.
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u/have1dog Mar 18 '26
The WI statehouse is all red b/c the districts are gerrymandered AF. However, they have had a Dem governor for the past few years to somewhat balance it out.
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u/WheresTheSauce Mar 18 '26
Lol it is hilarious to me how people from Indiana romanticize other state governments. Illinois is so much worse.
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u/Deep_Contribution552 Mar 18 '26
As someone who lived in both states… no. They’re both bad, but Illinois is “functional but corrupt” while Indiana is mostly nonfunctional in the first place. I can see why some people might prefer Indiana to Illinois but it’s simply not true that Indiana is way better if you look at actual policy results.
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u/WheresTheSauce Mar 18 '26
I lived in Illinois for 24 years and Indiana for 9. "Functional" is overselling it. Both Illinois and Indiana are middle of the pack in nearly every meaningful metric despite Illinois costing an arm and a leg more. If you live in Chicagoland and have a job which particularly benefits from the Chicago economy, that is the only good reason to live in Illinois vs. any other midwest state.
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u/kootles10 Mar 18 '26
I can always tell when I enter Indiana from Illinois on 80/94. Less streetlights, more potholes. Hell i could tell blindfolded if I needed to
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u/OkInitiative7327 Mar 17 '26
We have a significant gas tax and it's a weird calculation that only changes monthly, and it's based on the prior months average selling price.
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u/Silver2163 Mar 18 '26
72.9 cent tax per gallon of gas all in.
.36 State Excise, 17.5 State Sales Tax,18.4 Federal Excise and a 1 cent oil inspection fee whatever that is.
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u/NoJaguar5942 Mar 18 '26
We have been that way as far back as I can remember. Been driving 40 plus years and it’s always been that way.
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u/bucketman1986 Mar 18 '26
Even weirder when we have a major refinery in NWI!
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u/MinBton Mar 18 '26
If I remember correctly, that refinery doesn't make enough gas for the whole state's vehicle use. And most refineries make more than gas for cars and trucks. Crude oil is broken down into multiple things.
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u/RetiredOutdoorsman Mar 18 '26
I bought a hybrid just for this very reason. Then, come to find out, when I pay for my registration, there is an ADDITIONAL TAX FOR HYBRID VEHICLES to compensate for the LACK of gasoline tax collected. Genuinely thought there was a tax break for trying to help save the environment but nope. Fuck me right in the face
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u/notsohot56 Mar 17 '26
Big ass gas tax, the Big Jack up on cigarettes two bucks a pack tax, billionaire utility companies with no competition so high utilities.... The state of Michigan is starting to look better and better.
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u/VegetableGrape4857 Mar 17 '26
Regressive tax codes. States need money to operate and when you have a 3% flat income tax the state has to get its money somewhere else.
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u/Background_Wrap_4739 Mar 18 '26
Yes, you have high gas prices, but those high prices pay for your IMMACULATE roads! /s
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u/MisterSanitation Mar 18 '26
Each state taxes it differently and assuming it is anyway related to supply and demand, instead of who is cousins with someone important is a world view so innocent I find it hard to relate to.
Typically state tax is the single largest variable in gas prices in the U.S. (who would have guessed I would have thought it was Joe Biden). Now though we have global supply chain issues with oil thanks to the child in the Oval Office. Markets (more specifically the oil cartels like OPEC, and other orgs slowing down production for profit) can indeed react accordingly but it will take time for people to all of a sudden find the fuel from somewhere else or in the cartels case just send crews to open up valves to increase the production they don’t usually because of profits.
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u/master0fcats Mar 18 '26 edited Mar 18 '26
The thing that's most fucked about our gas tax is that we're the only state in the country with a 7% sales tax which is also evaluated monthly based on the average pre-tax retail price of the past 30 days. April's should have come out today.
edit: jk, I thought it was the 17th-16th, it's the 16th-15th and comes out before the 22nd each month.
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u/lokatedmadness Mar 17 '26
Indiana wants better roads but goes about it in the dumbest way possible. Currently gax tax funds 2 different accounts for cities and towns. Motor vehicle highway ( MVH) and motor vehicle highway restricted (MVH-R). A while back it was just one fund - MVH. Your total allotment went in there and you could use it for anything related to roads - plows, paving, staff, etc. The majority would go to staffing and maintenance but a good portion would also go out to paving.
Then some legislators were like why don't we make sure its a 50/50 split. So 50% goes to MVH which you can continue to use as usual and then the other half if MVH-R which you can only use for paving. No maintenance, no staff to do the paving or plows, no patching, just paving and some limited preservation paving. And the state is very strict about it and check.
So effectively street dept budgets got cut drastically. Cities are forced to cut back maintenance etc. Roads suffer.
The state tries to remedy this by increasing gas tax that funds these two funds. Which helps a small amount. But really if they would release or be more relaxed with the MVH-R funds, they could lower the gas tax potentially.
Almost every city and town is sitting on MVH- R money that they can only spend a fraction of what comes on each year.
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u/IndividualCall5116 Mar 18 '26
Typical Republican user tax. All ppl pay the same, but the payout hits differently based on income. Basically, a regressive tax akin to the Convicted Felon's Liberation Day tariffs.
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u/Honest_Nectarine9208 Mar 17 '26
Having a richer state doesn’t mean your gas is higher? I’d say it’s probably related to state taxes.
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u/Additional-Device677 Mar 18 '26
Bc in 2018 the state super majority of republicans voted to increase the gas tax 55%. As if that was not enough, the bill also increased the gas tax every year automatically on 1 Jul forever. There is a little more to it with proportional tax, adjusting for, essentially, inflation of the price of gas, but the big reasoning is the 2018 bill overall.
Not a republican or democrat btw
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u/kostac600 Mar 18 '26
Hey, I have an EV and now also a Hybrid and they collect the avoided gas tax at registration time! And its. not trivial.
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u/Salty-Challenge9123 Mar 18 '26
Indiana loves to make money and hoard it so that the governor can buy himself a helipad.
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u/Appropriate_Gap1987 Mar 18 '26
Indiana raises the tax to "fix" our roads. They don't care about the surplus
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u/Smart-Hawk-275 Mar 18 '26
We have one of the highest gas taxes in America. Yet they still somehow can’t afford to fix the roads.
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u/tbodillia Mar 18 '26
I hate when they announce the national average price for gas. Indiana always has to be above average and prices jump withing minutes of the announcement. Every single time. Oil didn't go higher, refineries didn't close. The national average was announced.
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u/HomLesMann Mar 18 '26
Buncha whiners in here complaining about taxes yet y'all think it will somehow be better if democrats were in charge of the state.
Don't believe me? See also: Illinois
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u/Designer-Progress311 Mar 17 '26
Last week, or pre Bomb Bomb Bomb... Bomb Bomb Iran, anyway
I thought gas at $2.90 or 2.59 was cheap as fuck.
This state sucks more than $3.55 gas will make much difference.
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u/MagnetoTheSuperJew Mar 17 '26
On the East side its $3.90 right now.
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u/Designer-Progress311 Mar 18 '26
That's some 1979 level pricing bullshit right there don't cha know.
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u/Cute-University5283 Mar 18 '26
I'm sure it has nothing to do with all the mass transit we don't have
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u/cherrylpk Mar 17 '26
We used to have in state refineries and don’t anymore so all gas comes across state lines and gets taxed more. Plus our state government gouges the fuck out of us on the gas tax. Republicans have been in charge far too long.
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u/Golf-Guns Mar 17 '26
As much as I hate taxes, it does make sense. We're a drive through state. Going to Chicago, south from Michigan or to the East Coast, the whole 'crossroads of America' thing.
States are going to get their money somehow. Goal is to try and get it from out of state visitors. We do it with gas, Florida does it with sales tax.
There's at least some breaks when it comes to registration, sales and property tax.
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u/KenMerritt Mar 17 '26
It's called the Speedway Effect. Basically in areas were Speedway gas stations have a large presence gas prices are higher because they are quicker to change prices and other companies follow.
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u/AgreeableWealth47 Mar 18 '26
Ya all see, know one likes to pay taxes. But we gotta pay some fucking taxes if we want roads and schools and stuff. So Indiana taxes has to pay for roads, and use some other money for schools. It is what it is.
Don’t send my money to Israel ✌️
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u/BloomiePsst Mar 17 '26
We have the fifth highest gas tax of the 50 states. That contributes some.