Fuel Tax Breakdown Calculator

This calculator breaks down the price you pay for petrol at the pump, showing how much is tax and how much is the actual cost of the fuel. New Zealand petrol prices carry a surprisingly large tax component, and most drivers have no idea what share of each litre goes to the government rather than to the fuel itself. The taxes include fuel excise duty, the largest single component, an ACC levy that funds accident cover, an emissions trading charge, and then GST charged on top of the whole lot, including on the other taxes. Together these can make up close to half the pump price. This tool reveals the split. You enter the pump price per litre and the total fuel taxes and levies per litre excluding GST, which is pre-filled with a typical figure you can adjust, and the calculator works out the GST component, the total tax, the underlying cost of the fuel before tax, and the percentage of the pump price that is tax. The results update as you type. Use it to understand where your fuel money goes, to see the effect of excise and levy changes, or simply out of interest. The GST is calculated as three twenty-thirds of the GST-inclusive pump price, the standard way to extract 15 percent GST from a tax-inclusive amount, and the excise and levies are taken as a fixed number of cents per litre. The before-tax cost is what is left, the commodity price of the fuel plus the retailer's margin. A striking insight the calculator gives: because GST applies on top of the excise and levies, you effectively pay tax on tax, and the combined tax share of a litre of petrol is often around 45 to 50 percent. The exact excise and levy rates change over time and with government policy, so adjust the input to match the current figures.

GST = price x 3/23. Excise and levies are a fixed cents-per-litre amount you can adjust. GST applies on top of the levies, so you pay tax on tax. Rates change over time.