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We already do tax petrol very heavily.

It's already that in Australia, and it's as much as $8.50 per gallon in the UK

In the UK the average petrol price is £1.16.6p/litre (according to http://www.petrolprices.com/ ).

Google tells me that 1 US gallon = 3.78541178 litres and 1 British pound = 1.5943 U.S. dollars

So gas (petrol) is $7.04 per US gallon over here.

For 100000km at mfr's figures my Prius would cost approx. $7250 (More like $8-10k)

For a typical car of that ilk, look at $14k+ for fuel. So saving $7k in fuel cost alone by the figures (or $4-6k or perhaps more, in real life).

Yeah I made the same mistake too, as I suspect does the author of the summary and indeed the Green Car Reports article.

I was in the middle of taking the piss out of TFA forgetting the currency conversion (says $1.17, average price is £1.17) when I realised they were probably talking about Canadian dollars, since it's the British Columbia Automobile Association. Then I was writing an anecdote about my error and jokingly suggesting I'd left another deliberate error in there when it occurred to me people using $ to refer to something else just might do the same thing with "gallons".

£1.17 at £1:$1.64= CAD$1.91 per litre.

$1.91 * 4.5 litres to the gallon= CAD$8.60. (so it seems they're even further out)

Seriously people. Metric system. But oh look, there's variations in that too. For fuck sake, I have enough of this shit revising for my tax exam.

You missed the point entirely. I never said that corporations pass on taxes by raising costs. My point was about shelf price perception, not about actual cost passing.

But let's turn to your point. Since gas includes tax, it is a good model to discuss (because it is not affected by the perception factor I described above). Let's assume that a ten-cent additional tax on gas was passed today. Are you saying, all other market factors aside, that the price of gas would not go up by ten cents?

Frankly, that's absurd, and mostly incorrect. Check out at the graphic here... it shows that taxes did not eat into profits, but rather added to the price. In other words, passed on to the consumer.

What about off-road diesel? The tax decrease is passed on to consumers as a direct decrease in sales price per gallon... they don't pad corporate profits.

Fuel aside, look at other items... does Walmart charge a different sticker price for a DVD player in two different cities that have different taxes? Does a Wii cost more (pre-tax) in one city than another? No.

I'd like to see how these talking points are "provably false" as you claim. I don't think you have any general proof... there may be one-off situations you can find, but I want to see something general.

There's not much point you trying to tell me what the fuel ratings in my country are like when you don't even know where I live.

http://www.petrolprices.com/about-fuel.html

TESCO actually sells 99 RON for their super unleaded.

Of course it doesn't matter to me much at the moment because I have a diesel :p

You pay $3.00 for fuel in the USA? And I thought that the UK was expensive -- average price for unleaded today is 95.7p, which according to Google Calculator is $1.77.

Well, I'm not paying it personally; I haven't got a car, I just walk and get lifts. Maybe that means I'm stealing somehow?