Westerly - Connecticut drivers in Rhode Island for work or fun often fill their tanks with cheaper out-of-state gas before heading home.

Noelle Dumaine of North Stonington on Thursday bought about $42 worth of regular gasoline priced at $3.93 a gallon at the 7-Eleven gas station near Dunn's Corners. She works in Westerly and waits until she's in town to get her gas.

"I think it's ridiculous that the gas is as high as it is, but there's really nothing I can do about it," Dumaine said.

As the highest price in the continental U.S., the statewide average for regular Connecticut gasoline comes in at $4.05 a gallon, according to AAA - a full 12 cents higher than the 7-Eleven station here, and 19 cents higher than Rhode Island's state average of $3.86 a gallon.

State taxes are a big part of the reason Connecticut's gasoline costs more than it does in neighboring states, industry experts say.

Connecticut's excise tax, also known as the gas tax, costs motorists 25 cents a gallon, while a state gross receipts tax costs 24 cents a gallon. The federal excise tax, which is the same in every state, is more than 18 cents a gallon, according to the Cromwell-based Independent Connecticut Petroleum Association.

That puts Connecticut's total gasoline tax at 67 cents per gallon, higher than every other New England state as well as New York and New Jersey. Rhode Island's taxes total 51 cents a gallon.

"Borders do matter," said Eugene Guilford Jr., executive director and chief executive officer of the ICPA.

"If a driver will shop around town for gas that's 2 or 3 cents less expensive, imagine what people along the borders do when gas is 20 or 30 cents cheaper," he said. "So these gas policies end up hurting the state because people migrate out of state to buy, and that's not good. It makes our state less competitive."

Nicholas Tosca of Farmington put $39 worth of gas into his Nissan Maxima Thursday on his way to Narragansett, and called the gas tax "outrageous." He said he plans long trips so that he fills up out of state whenever possible.

"Connecticut is pricing everybody out of the state," he said, "not only with gas but real estate taxes, sporting events, hunting licenses. … It's all just too high."

A call for cap on tax

The run-up on gasoline prices across the country, but especially in the Northeast, artificially inflates the gross receipts tax, which is 7 percent of the wholesale price of a gallon of gasoline, said Sen. Len Suzio, R-Meriden. Suzio wants to cap that tax in legislation he'll submit if Gov. Dannel P. Malloy calls a special session this fall.

Suzio said he would cap the gross receipts tax at 21 cents a gallon, which is what it would cost if gasoline were priced at $3 a gallon.

"With gas prices going up, we're collecting more in gas taxes than ever before," he said. "It's the wrong thing to do."

Michael Fox, executive director of the Stamford-based Gasoline and Automotive Service Dealers Inc., said he would reduce the gross receipts tax even further - to 3 to 5 cents a gallon, which would raise about $10 million. That would help pay for what it was intended to pay for, the Connecticut Underground Tank Cleanup Fund, he said.

While the excise, or gas, tax historically has gone to the State Transportation Fund to pay for highway and road maintenance, Fox said, the gross receipts tax, which last fiscal year totaled $345 million, went to the general fund. Of that, only $1.5 million annually was allocated to the intended target, the underground tank cleanup fund, Fox said.

"That's a little bit more than a shared sacrifice," he said.

Fox's goal is to fully fund the underground tank cleanup fund and give consumers a break. "Whatever they're using that $342 million for, there's a hole there, and it may be for a good purpose, but it was never intended for that use," he said. "You're misleading the taxpayer."

Under the previous administration, many of the dedicated funds like the underground tank cleanup fund were eliminated by the 2010 General Assembly and made into line item appropriations, said Gian-Carl Casa, undersecretary for the state Office of Policy and Management.

He said an estimated $320 million will be raised from the gross receipts tax, with $226.9 million of that going to the special transportation fund, $93 million to the general fund to help balance the budget and $1.3 million going to the underground tank cleanup fund.

"We're in the process of laying off 4,000 to 5,000 people because the state has insufficient funds," Casa said. "It doesn't exactly seem like the right time to give away state revenue. These are difficult times. We've had to make a lot of difficult decisions."

p.daddona@theday.com