I myself would rather see the .gov close off Carribean tax escape hatches for oil producers and all other domestic companies than go after subsidies for oil specifically. Subsidies for domestic oil subsidies amount to something like 4 billion annually IIRC. Their effective tax rates are generally less than 20% IIRC. All in all not that different from other mega corps.
Still, I'm not cryin' in my cornflakes for these guys.
Exxon Mobil Dodges the Tax Man
Quote:
Exxon Mobil registered an average 17.6 percent federal effective corporate tax rate on its annual earnings in the three years spanning 2008 to 2010. Its average domestic profits exceeded $6.8 billion. And as a 2011 Citizens for Tax Justice report points out:
Over the past two years, ExxonMobil reported $9,910 million in pretax U.S. profits. But it enjoyed so many tax subsidies that its federal income tax bill was only $39 million—a tax rate of only 0.4 percent.
Even when Exxon Mobil had a record profit of $40 billion in 2008 due to record oil prices it had only a 31 percent effective tax rate. That’s 13 percent lower than the maximum 35 percent despite being Exxon Mobil's fifth year as the top corporate earner in Fortune 500’s annual listing. The company paid no taxes at all to the U.S. federal government in 2009 on its domestic profits of nearly $2.6 billion. It appears that they avoided the tax man that year by legally funneling their profits through wholly owned subsidiaries in countries like the Cayman Islands, and reinvesting their earnings overseas.
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There is a math error in there regarding effective rate paid and top rate. I don't know what to make of it. Whatever.
or how about
Big Oil’s Banner Year
Quote:
Instead of heavily investing in job creation or production, the big five used $38 billion, or 28 percent of annual net income, to repurchase their own stocks. This practice enriches shareholders but it doesn’t add to oil supplies or investments in alternative fuels or other new technologies.
These companies also cling to tax breaks while maintaining $58 billion in cash reserves. This is nearly 30 times more than the estimated $2 billion in annual special tax breaks that these companies receive.
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Lots of interesting info in that second article.
Disclaimer - I have looked at this topic a lot and it mostly makes my head hurt without reaching a lot of satisfying conclusions. I'm a serious rank amateur in economics and especially tax policy.