jducoeur

Yes, that's correct. But put like this, I suspect people are at least a bit less likely to *perceive* it as a tax, due to its indirect nature. I mean, there are lots of implicit taxes in modern society -- but people tend not to notice the ones that aren't coming directly out of their own pockets quite as much. Also, this one is delightfully squishy: due to the auction approach, there is no clear "The government is charging us $3/gallon, which we're passing on to you" to point at -- the price is effectively set *by* the companies in the auction, and the blame gets spread around in messy ways.

But more importantly, the redistribution of the proceeds goes a fair ways towards helping with the negative impact of that tax, and *that* part is terribly clear and obvious. Even if people get pissed off at having to pay extra at the pump, the fact that most people will get back *more* than that extra goes a long ways towards neutralizing the anti-tax messaging.

(In practice, of course, they may not get back more than the extra: they'll get back more than the actual tax, but prices will have risen more than that due to scarcity. But that's getting into real economic subtlety, and shouldn't be a huge issue if the cap is set correctly and ratcheted down gradually...)