I think including the taxes on fuel would be good, as it'd show people the ridiculous amount of money they're paying to maintain the infrastructure their cars use (though fuel taxes often don't come close to covering road maintenance).
Such a system could get complicated quickly, though, and showing the profit margin also wouldn't be of interest to many salespeople. Making fuel price total up to €2.09/L is easy if petrol were only taxed at €0.7891/L, but the 21% VAT being applied to the total sales price after the per liter tax (and the 9% profit margin) makes the math a tad more complex.
I don't think you could call those taxes "hidden" though. Anyone can look up how much tax they pay. It's not like taxes are sent out in secret to gas pumps every day.
When my state jacked up fuel taxes a few years ago, some local gas stations started printing the $/gallon that went to taxes on stickers on the pumps. Seems like a good thing: more information is always good, as long as it's correct. Same thing would be true of this tariff info -- good if correct.
It didn't last on the gas pumps, though, because ultimately people don't have a choice -- most have to drive to get to work -- so they get used to it.
> ultimately people don't have a choice -- most have to drive to get to work -- so they get used to it.
I don't think the intent of gas stations displaying the taxes is to convince people to use less gas. It's to create political pressure to reduce the tax.
Such a system could get complicated quickly, though, and showing the profit margin also wouldn't be of interest to many salespeople. Making fuel price total up to €2.09/L is easy if petrol were only taxed at €0.7891/L, but the 21% VAT being applied to the total sales price after the per liter tax (and the 9% profit margin) makes the math a tad more complex.
I don't think you could call those taxes "hidden" though. Anyone can look up how much tax they pay. It's not like taxes are sent out in secret to gas pumps every day.