What is the Tax rate on a Litre of Fuel?

In a recent conversation I was talking to a friend about the levels of taxation on a litre of fuel (I am just that much fun) We realised that although we both knew that we were taxed too much neither of us knew what the actual rate of tax was so I decided to look into it.

The tax on fuel that is often quoted is about 65% and is calculated as

Cost of a Litre of Fuel = £1.29 Tax on fuel £0.84 (£0.58 Fuel Duty and £0.26 VAT) this gives us 0.84/1.29 = 65%

Now this is a pretty high percentage to pay in tax especially in times that people are struggling to get into work. However this is the percentage of what you pay that is tax, rather than the tax rate on the product itself. To find this we need to find the net product cost which in the simplest form you can calculate as 

Cost – Tax to get the net product cost so in this case it is £1.29 - £0.84 = £0.45 so this is the net product cost and produces an actual tax rate of 0.84/0.45 = 187%

And this isn't even taking into account the percentage of the net product cost that is actually made up through taxation (Tax on Staff Costs, Business Rates, Production Taxes etc...) I may look at trying to add these on but unfortunately the information isn't easy to find out as I think if we ever found out the true cost of taxation on our lives the whole house of cards may just come down.