Why Do Gas Prices Always End in .9 Cents?
(NEXSTAR) — If gas prices weren't already steep enough, there's an additional annoyance: a persistent fraction tacked onto each gallon, specifically nine-tenths of a cent. You typically notice this unusual pricing at the gas station (and almost never anywhere else). Since we cannot pay in fractions of a cent, why don’t gas stations simply round up? So where exactly does that 9/10 come from anyway? This tradition is a century-old custom that refuses to disappear. Ed Jacobsen, the founder of the Northwoods Petroleum Museum in Wisconsin, points out that the practice of setting prices at fractions of a penny originated with the initial gasoline taxes levied by state and federal governments beginning in 1919 through the period of the Great Depression. Back then, a gallon of gasoline could be purchased for approximately 10 cents, hence the taxes were relatively modest, measured in increments of one-tenth of a cent. Jacobsen told WSYR Gas stations directly transferre...