How much do you really pay for a gallon of gasoline these days?

Minus federal, state and local taxes — added on automatically at the pump — Utahns on average paid $2.813 for their actual gallon of unleaded, regular gas, as of June 14.

Add 42.9 cents in taxes and that's an average of $3.242 cents a gallon.

According to a June 13 survey by AAA, Utah ranked sixth among the states for the highest regular unleaded gasoline prices. Strip away the gasoline taxes and the Beehive State goes up a notch to fifth-highest prices among the 50 states and District of Columbia.

Most gasoline surveys simply use the total pump prices — taxes and all — because that's what consumers actually pay. However, in an era when the public is concerned what oil companies/retailers are actually charging, tax-less gasoline price comparisons can tell a different story.

For the total gas price, only Hawaii, Illinois, California, New Mexico and Connecticut currently are higher than the Utah average.

Take away taxes and look at the actual price of a gallon of gasoline, and New Mexico jumps to No. 1 and is the only one of those five states to remain ahead of Utah. Alaska, Wyoming and Colorado become the other three highest states.

Utahns, on average, are paying 33.4 cents a gallon more for gasoline (without taxes) than consumers are in the lowest-price state, Ohio.

Sean Comey, spokesman for AAA, said consumers can't just conclude that oil companies/retailers may sometimes hide behind gasoline taxes, like some kind of smokescreen, and use that to charge consumers more in some areas.

"I'm not sure all the dots connect on that," he said.

Comey said there are four different, basic components to the price of a gallon of gasoline.

1. Price of crude oil; 2. Profit at the refinery level; 3. Taxes; and 4. Retail markup.

"Retail markup is a lot slimmer than many consumers think," he said, explaining a local gasoline station/convenience store likely makes more profit on your drink and snacks than on a 15-gallon fill-up.

Comey said the good thing about gasoline taxes is that they tend to remain static and don't change a lot, whereas the rest of the price does. But that addition to gas prices also means you can't always just blame the oil companies for the cost of gasoline.

Rayola Dougher, a senior economic analyst for the American Petroleum Institute in Washington, D.C., agreed that a variety of factors go into the retail price of gasoline.

She said, "A lot of the West and Midwest were affected by refinery outages," the major reason for Utah's current high gasoline prices.