The state gas tax may have risen 12 cents last year — the amount targeted for repeal this November — but that’s far from all of the taxes drivers pay on every gallon of gasoline.

The actual tax on gasoline is closer to 73.82 cents per gallon, depending on where you fill up and the price of gas at the time.

However, the history of the gas tax, and various other taxes added to the cost of fuel, reveal an ongoing debate politicians and voters have been grappling with ever since the state’s gas tax was first instituted almost a century ago.Are streets a utility, like water and electricity, with users paying for what they eat? Or a public good, like schools, where each taxpayer chips in even if they don’t use them?

It all boils down to who benefits and who should pay, said John Harvey, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Davis.”That’s the major, ongoing question,” he said. “Then, what came in afterwards was additional parts of the equation: What are the impacts of roads, not only the benefits? And that should shoulder those effects?”As voters head to the polls to consider Prop 6, which would repeal the 12-cent gas tax increase approved this past year, along with a 20-cent rise in diesel taxes and additional vehicle registration fees which are expected to raise $5.4 billion annually for transportation projects, they will be joining the gas tax debate, facing questions such as those above, and many more.Should road users subsidize transit riders?

Or if the gas tax only go to highways, as fans of the gas tax repeal suggest? And how did our taxes get so large, anyway?To help get you oriented, we’ll break the taxes on gas down for you:

State gas tax: 30 cents per gallon

The state first started collecting a gas tax in 1923 at two cents per gallon as California was grappling with how to pay for maintenance of its new highway system. In 1909, the state funded a 3,000-mile, 34-route road network with an $18 million bond that had no actual funding source, other than the general fund, recognized to repay it,” said Martin Wachs, professor emeritus of urban planning at UCLA.

Conceived as a user fee, the tax was meant to approximate a toll to pay the costs of ongoing maintenance. But since building and staffing toll booths are more expensive than the money the tolls would create, an excise tax — in this case, a flat fee — has been instituted as an easier way to collect the exact same amount of money while charging individuals benefiting directly from the roads, Wachs said.

“The idea wasn’t that you would be taxing gasoline,” Wachs said,”but you would be charging drivers for their use of the streets.

“It did not take long, though, for voters to protect that money from being used for other purposes. Voters in 1937 declared a 3-cent tax on diesel, along with an amendment to the state constitution restricting the use of gas taxes into the construction, improvement, repair and maintenance of highways and roads, or the purchase of rights-of-way to construct new highways and roads. Later, in 1973, voters agreed gas tax money could also be used to help pay for public transit and to lessen the environmental impact of driving.

After collection and administration fees, half of the original fuel taxes went to highways, with the other half moving to county thoroughfares, similar to how the funds are distributed now. Before last year, the last time the gas tax was increased was in 1989, when voters doubled it from 9 cents per gallon to 18 cents. Senate Bill 1 (SB1), the 2017 legislation that raised the gas tax and would be repealed under Prop 6, raised the present tax to 30 cents per gallon.

Federal gas tax: 18.4 cents per gallon

The federal tax on gasoline was first enacted in 1932 at one cent per gallon. It was last increased in 1993 to 18.4 cents per gallon. Additionally, it is regarded as a”user fee,” similar to California’s gas tax, though the federal government is increasingly relying on general fund money to pay for transportation projects, stated Gian-Claudia Sciara, an associate professor in the University of Texas and former professor in UC Davis’ Institute for Transportation Studies.

State sales tax on gasoline: 2.25 percent (or, roughly 8.1 cents for a $3.60-gallon of gas)

When the state’s general sales tax was first enacted, it didn’t include gasoline. That is because road users were paying a”fee” in the form of the gas tax, Wachs explained. That thinking changed in 1971, when the legislature approved the Transportation Development Act and included gasoline in the state sales tax, with some of those funds dedicated to public transport for the first time.

California had just undergone a significant expansion of its freeways, but they were already filling with more automobiles than they could manage, Harvey said. The state couldn’t simply build its way out of congestion, and smog was getting worse. Much worse, Wachs said.

“The idea… was to reduce auto dependency and reduce smog by getting more people on transit,” he said.

The 7.25 percent sales tax on petrol was eventually repealed in 2010 under a complex funding scheme called the”gas tax swap” that removed all but 2.25 percent of the sales tax. Just.25 percent of the slashed sales tax on gasoline goes to transportation. The rest goes to public safety, local health and social service programs, and city and county operations.

The US Congress in 1986 established the Underground Storage Tank Trust Fund to pay for damage caused by leaking or abandoned oil storage tanks, said Matt Rocco, a spokesman for Caltrans. The trust fund reimburses small business owners, citizens and local regulatory agencies for environmental cleanup, he said.

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