I agree with you. I was just ruminating on the idea of narrowing the tax so that it couldn’t be avoided or black-marketed.
It is extremely hard to refine gasoline, to transport it, and to safely deliver it to automobiles.
$21 dollars a gallon, though, would prove that energy is more elastic than people might think....horses and buggies, for example.
But, energy would be one of a few items one could focus a sales tax on, so that the black market would have difficulty avoiding it. Fossil fuel, at least, by its very nature requires a controlled distribution.
I just don’t see what’s so impossible about collecting and accounting for a national sales tax at the point of purchase.
State and local governments do it every day, on every purchase. Some online retailers collect state taxes nationwide and manage to pay them to the respective states.