On April 8th, Governor Braun issued an executive order declaring a statewide energy emergency and suspending the Indiana Gasoline Use Tax, in theory saving Hoosiers 17.2 cents per gallon on gas. Three weeks into the suspension, Hoosiers are only seeing 6.29 cents of that savings, while retailers are pocketing the other two thirds.
On April 28th, Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita launched a tool called IN Fuel Watch to monitor prices at the ~4,600 gas stations in the state. The site purports to help Hoosiers check prices and see which gas stations are passing the gas tax savings onto drivers, but a closer look at their own data tells a different story.
Snapshot of the dashboard portion of IN Fuel Watch taken on the evening of April 29.
The IN Fuel Watch dashboard is flawed from the start. The first metric it lists is the number of stations monitored, clarifying that this is the number of stations with post-April 8 prices. The number of stations they claim in that box (4,651) doesn't match the number of stations in their list (4,649), and 1,884 of those stations don't have post-April 8 price data despite being counted. If that box were accurate, it would say they're tracking 2,765 stations with post-April 8 price data. They should also exclude the 75 stations with data more than 24 hours out of date (gas prices change quickly) bringing the number of truly relevant stations to 2,690.
The data quality issues go beyond station counts and addresses. In the first station I spot checked because it was near me, IN Fuel Watch listed a price of $4.20 per gallon, while GasBuddy and my own check show the same station at $4.99, a 70 cent discrepancy on a single station with data purporting to be for the same day. This quick check raises serious questions about the source of the price data.
The next box is the baseline average of $3.930, the average daily price of all stations measured between April 1 and April 7, the seven days prior to the gas tax suspension. They call this the baseline, but they don't use it as one. The third box, "price at suspension," is the number they actually use for comparisons. This figure, $4.137, is the average price for all stations measured on April 8th. Importantly, news of the imminent suspension was spreading before it was officially announced, and GasBuddy data show a sharp price increase of 24 cents across April 7th and 8th as stations moved preemptively. Using this inflated number instead of the $3.930 baseline is overly generous to the stations. It's also baffling; why bother calculating and displaying a baseline if you're not going to use it?
The cumulative effect of these choices is a dashboard that flatters gas stations at every turn. Even the current average figure isn't immune: their dashboard reads $4.093, but using their own data, the correct average of stations with prices reported today is $4.084.
None of the data for April 1-8 are available from IN Fuel Watch; Hoosiers are asked to take both numbers on faith. To answer the savings question more honestly, I built a parallel dataset using GasBuddy's publicly available data, recording the average daily gas price in Indiana alongside the national average. Mondays are absent from GasBuddy's historical data, so they're missing from my dataset, but it's not a selective omission. Rather than comparing Indiana prices to a fixed dollar baseline, I measured how Indiana's price advantage over the national average changed after April 8th. This controls for broader market forces including crude oil prices, refinery capacity, and tariff uncertainty that affect prices everywhere regardless of Indiana's tax policy. If Indiana's price advantage over the national average widens after April 8th, that widening represents real suspension savings reaching consumers. By that measure, Hoosiers have seen an average daily savings of just 6.29 cents per gallon since the suspension began, roughly one third of the promised 17.2 cents.
The chart below tells the fuller story. Prices actually got worse for Hoosiers immediately after April 8th, as stations that had raised prices in anticipation of the suspension showed no benefit at all during the first week. Savings gradually materialized through mid-April as stations cycled through pre-purchased inventory, briefly approaching the full 17 cents around April 23rd. Since then, however, the trend has reversed sharply, and the inventory excuse doesn't hold three weeks in.
Governor Braun is expected to announce soon whether the gas tax suspension will be renewed. The stakes are higher than they were on April 8th. Starting May 1st, Indiana's gasoline sales tax increases to 23.3 cents per gallon, meaning a renewed suspension would be shielding Hoosiers from an even larger tax than the one originally suspended, or putting more of our money in the pockets of gas retailers. Hoosiers deserve an honest accounting of whether this policy is working. The state claims to have the data to do that, but their methodology and quality control are severely lacking.
[1] Executive order suspending gas tax - in.gov/gov/files/Gas-tax-EO.pdf
[2] IN Fuel Watch website - infuelwatch.com
[3] GasBuddy Historical Data - fuelinsights.gasbuddy.com/charts
Data note: I'm posting this late on April 29, and the data here are based on that date.