Shocker: Oil companies pay the most in income taxes

President Obama and the Democrats’ calls for more revenue are almost never complete without some kind of shoutout to how we need to end loopholes for those treacherous, evil oil companies, but just a friendly reminder: Oil companies provide for some of the most handsome portions of federal revenue already.

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To identify the companies that pay the most taxes, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed corporate tax payments for the top 150 companies by revenue. … These are the companies paying the most in taxes:

1. ExxonMobil

• Income tax expense: $31.05 billion

• Earnings before taxes: $78.73 billion

• Revenue: $428.38 billion

•1-year share price change: 6.56%

• Industry: Oil and gas …

2. Chevron

• Income tax expense: $20.00 billion

• Earnings before taxes: $46.33 billion

• Revenue: $222.58 billion

• 1-year share price change: 9.52%

• Industry: Oil and gas

I would merely like to point out, once more, that I am advocate for the elimination of all energy subsidies, breaks, loopholes, incentives, and what have you, from oil and natural gas to wind and solar alike — because they all serve niche interests, distort free market signals, and further encumber the competitiveness of our tax code.

What Democrats always conveniently forget to mention about the attractive-sounding idea of eliminating all of these greeeeedy oil company tax breaks, however, is that without an accompanying decrease in across-the-board rates, it’s really just a deceptive ways of hiking taxes, which is of course their goal. They don’t want revenue neutrality, they want more revenue to pay for their big-government schemes; and if anybody is honestly convinced that those tax hikes would come on the backs of those darn fat cats’ ill-begotten hoarded profits rather than on the backs of everyday oil consumers (which is, I might add, everybody — hence why oil companies are so very big), they’ve got another thing coming.

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By the way — who’s up for some more taxes at the pump?

Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) on Tuesday said Congress needs to pass legislation increasing the federal gasoline tax in order to pay for increased and ongoing demands on U.S. infrastructure.

DeFazio warned on the House floor that the federal highway trust fund will fall to zero by next year, and said the government is spending billions less on infrastructure each year, which is hurting job creation. He said a recent report from the American Society of Civil Engineers shows that the U.S. is falling behind on maintaining its infrastructure compared with other countries.

“We’re going to have to talk about revenues, it’s the only way to solve that problem,” he said. “We can get a 100 percent rate of return. It’s pretty simple. We would just index the existing gas tax — which hasn’t changed since 1993.”

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Beege Welborn 5:00 PM | December 24, 2024
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