When you pay your electric bill this month, don’t think of it as paying New York State Electric &Gas or National Grid for keeping the lights on in your home.

Think of it as paying part of your taxes.

While you’re at it, you might as well consider your January and February electric bills as part of your overall taxes, too. Because that’s what they are.

The dirty little secret is that state and local taxes account for more than a quarter of a typical New York customer’s electric bill. Put another way, figure your January, February and March payments go straight to the tax man.

That tax burden zaps the state’s economy, channeling $6.4 billion to state and local governments last year, up 15 percent from the year before. And it’s a big reason why you and I—and everyone else in the state—pay the third-highest electric rates in the country.

For National Grid’s residential customers, that means paying about 16.2 cents per kilowatt hour, or about 43 percent more than the average U. S. electricity user, according to data from the state Public Service Commission and the U. S. Energy Information Administration. A typical NYSEG residential customer pays 15.7 cents, or 39 percent more than the national average.

Kenneth Adams, president and chief executive officer of the Business Council of New York State, says the “outrageously high” tax burden on electricity is a huge drain on the state’s economy, making it harder for businesses to compete and create jobs.

“These taxes drive jobs out of our state,” he said.

The Public Policy Institute, the Business Council’s research affiliate, released a report last week detailing how taxes are driving up our electric bills. Even more disturbing, the growing tax burden on electric bills negated the benefit from falling wholesale power prices, which dropped by 18 percent from 2000 to 2008, according to the New York Independent System Operator, which oversees the state’s power grid.

“We are just so uncompetitive now,” said Steven A. Taylor, the institute’s research director and the report’s author.

We’re uncompetitive because of high property taxes that account for more than half of the overall taxes collected on electricity, as well as the penchant of state officials for using utility bills to impose a stealth tax increase.

Last year, that came in the form of a sixfold increase in an assessment that previously had been used to fund the PSC and other energy agencies, costing residents and businesses an estimated $600 million.

This year, Gov. David A. Paterson has proposed allowing municipalities to impose a 3 percent gross receipts tax on utility bills. Lifting it would cost ratepayers an estimated $100 million.

Environmental assessments total nearly $600 million and are supposed to support energy conservation and renewable energy initiatives.

Tack on franchise taxes and sales taxes, and all of a sudden you’ve got a total electric bill that is 26.7 percent tax.

“You can’t keep using private sector industries as a tax collector because taxpayers won’t stand for increases in more open forms of taxation,” Taylor said. “Every year, you can’t just keep piling these additional tax burdens on ratepayers.”

Sadly, the pressure to do just that is greater than ever, with the state facing a budget deficit of more than $8 billion, which makes rolling back any of the energy taxes unlikely. Maybe the best we can hope for is to cap them at current levels.

But turning on the lights still costs more than 50 percent less in such places as North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky and most states in the Midwest and the South.