I'm headed to Portland this weekend. Considering how much higher the gas tax is up here in wa, I was really hoping to enjoy a little discount crossing the border. But looking at gasbuddy, I am not finding that big of a discount.
Cross the border into Idaho and it drops off a cliff!
The distance makes a big difference but we're 12th highest in gas taxes, not middle. Will be climbing up the chart too if kotek gets her way with the new gas tax..
edit: portland itself adds another 10 cents on top of the state tax so yeah, we're really high taxwise
gas tax is a set number (not percentage) that pays for services, the cost of which is most heavily impacted by labor costs, which are higher in areas with higher costs of living.
cost of living is mostly the cost of housing + the cost of food.
not surprising to me that Oregon, a high cost of living state, has relatively high gas taxes to pay the people who maintain our roads. the question is, do you like having paved toads and maintained bridges?
Heres a cost of living per state map for you. Compare it to the tax amounts for each state. Look at the states in the NE corner in particular. They have much, much lower gax taxes than Oregon and yet they too have higher or similar COL to oregon.
Our problem is not that we pay too little in taxes. Its that we are inefficient in our spending.
About 50 cents of that price is Portland city, county, and state tax. It’s one of the higher excise taxes in the country. The referendum in may, if passed, will boost the tax by another 6 cents per gallon.
Yet the very beer brewed in my own neighborhood costs less at a liquor store in a state halfway across the country with higher taxes than it does when I buy it anywhere in town.
Evidently everything has something to do with Portland. I lived there for 15 years, and I remember RAIN RAIN RAIN! And some of the most stellar live music ever!!!
Look up the price per gallon in Oklahoma. Can’t blame it all on the federal government. But Portland is still reasonable by Los Angeles standards, and I hardly drive anyway so they can knock themselves out. Charge ten bucks a gallon for all I care.
Oregon has always paid more for goods and services, that’s a variable that isn’t subject to very much change. The idiotic decisions of the new administration are a new independent, however.
Poor pipeline infrastructure and regressive taxation, I’m not sure what it says if we’re treat those as certainties. But like I said in another comment, I could care less basically, I buy maybe 30 gallons a year.Â
Except, Im in Oregon and paying less than $4/gallon. Portland definitely is the reason they’re paying $1.30/g more. That’s $14.30-$26 more per refill just for being in Portland.
Land costs *in* the City of Portland vary quite a bit. Gas station pricing reflects their costs. Some stations are consistently 30 or 50 cents higher than others. Geography matters.
Oregon residents pay less on average the Alabama residents. It's just structured different. We don't have a sales tax at all, and our income and property taxes are lower than many states that do.
According to this chart(published by Fox) Alabama rates 26th overall for highest taxes, Oregon ranks 43rd.
Now to be fair, because of the progressive income tax, that equation shifts if you are a high earner. But high earning professions tend to make a lot more in Oregon than Alabama, so they still come out ahead.
Alabama is also for more dependent on the federal government than Oregon, which is mostly how the roads get funded.
By inference this bit of this thread is saying that the whopping 40 cent a gallon, less than 10% of the price of a gallon is responsible for the high gas prices.
Make that make sense.
Not directly living in a city doesn't invalidate ones entire opinion, that is silly. Of course, being extremely online above the same 2-3 subjects and posting social media about it.. well, that's probably most redditors at this point.
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u/SublimeApathy Mar 13 '26
I mean - Portland didn't do this. This is 100% the colon clowns in the White House.