- Apr 1, 2011
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Deferred taxes still have to be paid, eventually.What was surprising, though, was the extent to which these companies were able to delay or defer the payment of the federal taxes they accrued. Most of the companies in our study deferred more than they actually paid. When the deferred taxes are subtracted from the amount these 20 companies owe, their average “current” tax rate drops to 11.7 percent. The independent oil and gas companies in the bottom half of our list, excluding the ones that recorded losses for the period, deferred almost all of the federal income taxes they accrued during the last five years, reporting an average current tax rate of just 3.7 percent.No, it doesn't. In fact, it pays hundreds of billions in taxes to the government every year. The claim that the government subsidizes the fossil fuel industry is snowflake propaganda, and nothing more.Surely you don't expect us to believe the petroleum industry doesn't get support from govt's in the forms of tax breaks and billions in subsidies...??If Solar And Wind Are So Cheap, Why Are They Making Electricity So Expensive?
can you laugh off Forbes?
facts are the taxpayer is keeping these green companies alive with our tax dollars, not our pay checks.
it's a scam
Link to what they pay...because these are the tax breaks they shouldn't keep getting.
- Expensing Intangible Drilling Costs ($13.9 billion): Since 1913, this tax break has let oil companies write off some costs of exploring for oil and creating new wells. When it was created, drilling meant taking a gamble on what was below the earth without high-tech geological tools. But software-led advances in seismic analysis and drilling techniques have cut that risk down.
The cost of finding oil is a business expense. Why shouldn't it be deductible just like any other business expense. I can deduct the cost of my laptop, computer bag, any software I purchase, headphones, you name it.
Those may be legitimate subsidies, but you have to subtract them from the hundreds of billions the oil companies pay in taxes every year. State and federal xxcise taxes on gasoline come to about $100 billion. Then there are the income taxes that oil companies pay.
- Deducting percentage depletion for oil and natural gas wells ($11.5 billion): Since 1926, this has given oil companies a tax breaks based on the amount of oil extracted from its wells. The logic is, if manufacturers get a break for the cost of aging machinery, drillers can deduct the cost of their aging resources. (You decide for yourself whether that makes any sense.) Since 1975, it's only available to "independent oil producers," not the big oil companies, like Exxon and BP. But many of these smaller companies aren't actually small. According to Oil Change International, independents made up 86 of the top 100 oil companies by reserves. Those 86 had a median market cap of more than $2 billion. So essentially, this is a tax break that subsidizes the Very Big oil companies at the expense of the Very Biggest.*
- The domestic manufacturing deduction for oil and natural gas companies ($11.6 billion): In 2004, as American manufacturing was being ravaged by China's entrance on the global scene, Congress passed legislation designed to encourage companies to keep factories operating in the U.S. Thanks to some intensive lobbying, the oil industry ended up as one of the beneficiaries. But while the refining process does involve high-tech manufacturing, there was never any danger that either drilling or refining was going to migrate overseas.
The big tax breaks don't stop there. For instance, accounting rules worth about $2 billion a year to the industry let companies deduct more for the cost of developing wells as oil prices rise. But it gives you a flavor of what we're talking about here -- bonuses that aren't even available to every company in the industry.
Those are very few, and the taxes paid on oil and gasoline are massive in comparison.
https://www.usnews.com/opinion/econ...about-oil-and-gas-company-corporate-tax-rates