Why are gas prices at the pump always listed to nine-tenths of a cent?
No one seems to know exactly where or when the practice originated, but everyone agrees gas was sold at the pump in fractions of a cent at least as far back as the 1920s or 1930s, when automobile culture really began to take off. Some say that the fractional pricing was introduced in response to federal gasoline taxes that were themselves assessed in parts of a cent. Others say that tiny price changes of a tenth of a cent were more significant back when a gallon of gasoline didn’t cost much more than a dime. And everyone agrees that pricing at nine-tenths of a cent gives the station owner the same advantage a grocer might get for charging $1.99 rather than a whopping $2.00 for a bottle of sparkling water. Whatever its origin, the practice is now built in to the pricing system. Federal and state taxes on gasoline still work out to a fraction of a cent per gallon and get paid when distributors purchase fuel from the refineries. The distributors who sell to the filling stations often set