NM fuel tax increase could ease fiscal pain

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By The Staff

For many years New Mexico citizens have seen gasoline prices bounce up or down by 5, 10 or more cents per gallon.  

Sometimes there were several price changes each week.  

Service station operators, fuel distributers and the general public easily handled the constant price changes.  

Nor have we seen any major negative economic impact or complaints from the general public concerning these constant price bounces.

 The April 2010 AARP Bulletin listed the gasoline tax per gallon for each of the states. The average for all the states was 26 cents per gallon for gasoline. Forty-three states had higher rates than New Mexico’s 18.8 cents per gallon.  The NM Legislative Finance Committee’s fuel tax specialist told me each one-cent increase in NM Fuel Tax provides an additional $12.7 million in revenue ($8.4 million from gasoline and $4.3 million from diesel fuel). If NM increased our fuel tax by 7.2 cents per gallon to the national average of 26 cents per gallon, it could generate an additional $91.44 million dollars in revenue.


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