Alaska set for vote on oil-tax cut after lobby group submits petition
Source: Associated Press
Alaska set for vote on oil-tax cut after lobby group submits petition
ANCHORAGE, Alaska, July 13 | Sun Jul 14, 2013 4:46am EDT
(Reuters) - Critics of an oil-industry tax cut handed a petition with 50,000 signatures to Alaska state officials on Saturday, more than enough to force a referendum that would overturn a new oil tax law.
The bill, approved by the legislature three months ago, replaces taxes tracking oil prices with a cap on tax at 35 percent of net profits. Expectations for the new system were for a likely tax range from about 14 percent to about 20 percent.
"This bill that they passed is against the interests of Alaska," Vic Fischer, a former state senator and one of two surviving authors of the Alaska constitution, told a group of about 50 banner-waving tax-cut opponents gathered outside government offices in Anchorage.
Referendum supporters, organized in a group called "Vote Yes - Repeal the Giveaway", needed 30,169 signatures of registered voters - 10 percent of the total turnout in the last statewide election - to qualify their measure for the 2014 ballot.
Leading oil producers in Alaska include BP Plc, ConocoPhillips and Exxon Mobil Corp.
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/14/alaska-oiltax-idUSL1N0FK04Y20130714?rpc=401
Laelth
(32,017 posts)-Laelth
PuffedMica
(1,061 posts)There is absolutely no consideration given to green house gasses and global warming when dollars are on the table.
These big oil companies need to pay for the carbon pollution they are dumping into the atmosphere. They profit while the true cost is externalized to the citizens of the world. In the end it will be all of us who have to pay the price of a warming world.
marble falls
(57,097 posts)even more and effectively for once!
another_liberal
(8,821 posts)Is it really necessary to let them rape your land, pollute your water, haul off your natural resources and then give them a fifty percent tax cut as well? The big energy corporations do not own the whole World. They should not be treated as if they do.
roguevalley
(40,656 posts)another_liberal
(8,821 posts)Thank you.