Not One But Two Gas Tax Increases for Illinois Coming Next Year

Gas is a hot topic with most drivers today who are paying extreme amounts of money, starting in 2023 Illinois residents will be paying even more with an increase in gas tax.

Illinois Policy states that Illinois is the second-highest state nationwide in the gas tax (just behind California), and it's about to increase. Starting in 2023 Illinois residents who fill up their tanks will now have to pay 42.5 cents more in gas tax. But what, there's more. It will increase AGAIN in July 2023 to 44.4 cents per gallon. Why?

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker doubled the state's gasoline tax in 2019 to 38 cents from 19 cents per gallon, including automatic annual hikes. The election-year package of taxes relief includes a 6-month delay in the automatic hike, but that means there will be two hikes in 2023.

There was a gas tax suspension put in place for 6 months (unlike the grocery tax which was a full year) and that 6 month period ends on 12/31/22. This is part of the Rebuild Illinois plan that was laid out early in 2022. Money from the sales will help fund road improvements, public education, and environmental conservation according to WQAD.

Start saving those pennies even more if you're an Illinois driver!

LOOK: See how much gasoline cost the year you started driving

To find out more about how has the price of gas changed throughout the years, Stacker ran the numbers on the cost of a gallon of gasoline for each of the last 84 years. Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (released in April 2020), we analyzed the average price for a gallon of unleaded regular gasoline from 1976 to 2020 along with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for unleaded regular gasoline from 1937 to 1976, including the absolute and inflation-adjusted prices for each year.

Read on to explore the cost of gas over time and rediscover just how much a gallon was when you first started driving.