Palin Boosted Oil-Company Taxes While Alaska Had Budget Surplus
By Alison Fitzgerald
Sept. 6 (Bloomberg) -- Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, who has joined the Republican national ticket as a tax-cutter, was a driving force in raising a tax on oil companies last year that will help swell the state's budget surplus...
Palin, 44, proposed the tax increase Sept. 4, 2007, and called a special legislative session to pass it...
Palin's oil tax is similar to the windfall profits tax proposed by Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama. McCain, 72, has criticized Obama's plan...
Under Palin's plan, called ``Alaska's Clear and Equitable Share,'' oil company profits are taxed at a 25 percent base rate, up from the previous 22.5 percent. When the price rises to $30 over cost, or about $52 a barrel, the tax rate rises 0.2 percent for each dollar.
Oil companies weren't happy with the plan when it passed.
``This massive tax increase will weaken investment in Alaska's oilfields at the very time that more investment is needed,'' Doug Suttles, president of BP Exploration Alaska Inc., said in a Dec. 27 e-mailed statement. ``We will now review all our planned activities.''