California carries $1.1734 a gallon in diesel tax. Alaska $0.3335

A gallon of diesel is taxed twice. The federal layer is the same everywhere in the country. The state layer does not. Federal diesel excise runs 0.243 USD per gallon, plus 0.001 for the leaking underground storage tank fund, so 0.244 rides on every gallon sold. Everything above that line is a state decision, and the distance between one state's decision and the next is wide enough to matter on a long haul.

US fuel tax by state for trucking deserves a proper read. What you pay at the pump sits inside a price you cannot itemise. What you settle on a fuel return follows the miles you ran in each jurisdiction. Two numbers, two sheets, mixed up all the time.

The floor is the same everywhere

Start with the figure that never moves. The 0.244 federal layer is identical in Alaska, in California and in the forty-eight states between them. It is the same on a gallon bought at a card lock outside Laredo as on a gallon bought off the interstate in Maine. Because it never varies, it cannot explain a single difference between two pumps, which means every variance on the board below is state policy and the part a route plan can work around.

The US fuel tax by state board

California taxes a gallon of diesel hardest. Alaska taxes it lightest. Nobody who has fuelled in both is surprised by the order, though the size of the gap catches people who assume the federal rate does most of the work.

These figures come from the US Energy Information Administration federal and state motor fuel tax sheet, July 2026 revision, in US dollars per gallon. State excise is the flat rate a state sets. Other state charges are the fees and additions that are not a flat excise. State total is what the state collects. All in adds the 0.244 federal layer.

State	State excise	Other state charges	State total	All in
California	0.482	0.4474	0.9294	1.1734
Illinois	0.571	0.221	0.792	1.036
Pennsylvania	0.741	none listed	0.741	0.985
Indiana	0.63	0.01	0.64	0.884
New Jersey	0.135	0.4265	0.5615	0.8055
District of Columbia	0.235	0.122	0.357	0.601
Alaska	0.08	0.0095	0.0895	0.3335
Hawaii	0.16	0.025	0.185	0.429
Arizona	0.18	0.01	0.19	0.434
Oklahoma	0.19	0.01	0.2	0.444
Texas	0.2	none listed	0.2	0.444

California's 1.1734 and Alaska's 0.3335 are the same gallon with the same 0.244 federal layer on it. The state line carries the rest.

Hawaii sits in the cheap half of that board at 0.429 all in. That does not mean the pump price is low. The tax sheet is not the price sheet.

Five territories appear without an all-in line, Puerto Rico at a 0.26 diesel total among them.

Two layers inside one state line

New Jersey prints the lowest excise of the five dearest states, 0.135, and still lands near the top of the all-in board because its other-charges line is 0.4265. Pennsylvania runs the other way. Its excise of 0.741 is the heaviest flat rate in the country, and it lists no separate state charge at all.

A carrier reading the excise column alone would call New Jersey cheap and Pennsylvania expensive. One of those calls would be badly wrong. The all-in column is the only line that compares across states, and it is the line to quote in a lane plan.

California is the extreme of the other shape. It asks 0.482 in excise and 0.4474 in other charges, so a large piece of what it collects is not in the flat rate anyone quotes on a fuel desk. Illinois has the same pattern in a milder form, 0.571 and 0.221.

Each state page carries that breakdown beside the district price, so Pennsylvania at 0.741 and California at 0.9294 can be read against what the pump charges.

What a fill costs, and why this sheet will not answer it

A fill volume is the one figure this sheet cannot supply. Tax on a fill is the rate multiplied by the gallons actually bought. The rate is published. The gallons belong to your truck and your tank, and no single fill volume standing in for a fleet is honest. Run your own volume against the rate on the fuel cost calculator and you have your own number. An article that hands you a fill total has picked a tank size for you.

The rate you file at is not the rate on the receipt

IFTA is the mechanism that turns a tax table into a return. The 3Q2026 matrix runs 58 jurisdictions, ten Canadian provinces and forty-eight US states, and it prints a separate rate for US-licensed and Canadian-licensed carriers wherever the two differ. A carrier reads the column that matches its licence, which is why the provinces carry a rate in dollars per litre beside a US rate in dollars per gallon. Those units do not convert into one clean comparison, so the sheet keeps them apart.

The matrix and the EIA sheet do not always print the same number for the same state. California is 0.979 on the IFTA matrix against a 0.9294 state total on the EIA sheet. Illinois is 0.738 against 0.792. Pennsylvania prints 0.741 on both. Two publishers, two definitions, and the gap between them is not something to average away.

File on the IFTA sheet. Read the retail tax on the EIA sheet. Reconciling a return against the wrong one of those two is how a carrier spends a week explaining itself.

What to do with it

Know your jurisdiction mix before you quote a lane. Tax settles on distance burned in each place, so miles run in Illinois are a different filing from miles run in Indiana, and the rate sheet shows that before the invoice does.

Buy fuel where you will burn it. Cheap fuel bought in a low-rate state and burned in a high-rate one moves the settlement, not the pump price. The driver sees the pump. The carrier pays the return.

Carry the print date. The EIA sheet is a July 2026 revision, the matrix is 3Q2026, and a table remembered from last year is a habit rather than a rate.

What to watch

The July 2026 revision and the 3Q2026 quarter are the timestamps on the two sheets used here. No single date covers the whole board, so those two are the only freshness signal a fuel desk has.

The EIA weekly retail diesel survey puts the US national average at 6.352 USD per gallon for the week of October 26, against 6.276 the week before. That price carries the tax inside it, and knowing both tells you what the road costs and what the state costs.

US fuel tax by state for trucking comes down to two dated sheets, one for what sits inside the price and one for what you file. The US diesel pages carry the price and the tax side by side, and the fuel tax page carries the IFTA matrix for all 58 jurisdictions.

Sources: US Energy Information Administration, Federal and State Motor Fuel Taxes, July 2026 revision, and weekly retail diesel survey for the week of October 26. IFTA, Inc. quarterly Tax Matrix, 3Q2026. How our published figures are built at https://dashboard.northernmilemedia.com/methodology/nmdi/.