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State drivers in top ten in gas taxes paid

Yesterday (April 18) was the deadline for filing federal and state income tax returns. A gas price tracking website used it to remind people about another tax they pay many times over at about 50 cents a pop. George Olsen has more.

North Carolinians spend nearly $318 a year in gas taxes, the tenth highest total in the nation. That’s on a combined federal, state and local gas tax of nearly 53 cents a gallon. About eighteen-and-a-half cents of that is a federal tax unchanged since 1993. The gas price tracking website GasBuddy.com reports the state’s gas tax is slightly higher than a national average of 49-and-a-half cents while significantly higher than the Southern region’s average of 38.7 cents. The only state in the South paying a higher tax is Florida, about two cents higher. The highest rate… Pennsylvania, where drivers pay nearly 78 cents in taxes for each gallon pumped. I’m George Olsen.

George Olsen is a 1977 Havelock High School graduate. He received his B.A. in Broadcast Journalism from the University of South Carolina in 1982 where he got his first taste of non-commercial radio working for their student station WUSC. After graduation he worked about five years in commercial radio before coming to work at Public Radio East where he has remained since outside of a nearly 3-year stint as jazz and operations coordinator at WUAL in Tuscaloosa, Alabama in the early 1990s. On his return to eastern North Carolina he hosted classical music for Public Radio East before moving into the Morning Edition host position and now can be heard on All Things Considered. He also hosts and produces The Sound, five hours of Americana, Roots Rock and Contemporary Folk weekday evenings on PRE Public Radio East News & Ideas, and is a news and feature producer for Public Radio East.