Environment & Energy

unhappycamper

(60,364 posts) Sun Apr 28, 2013, 06:54 AM Apr 2013

ExxonMobil rakes in $9.5 billion profit, on which it will pay a 13 percent tax rate, if that

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/04/26/1205000/-ExxonMobil-rakes-in-9-5-billion-profit-on-which-it-will-pay-a-13-percent-tax-rate-if-that

ExxonMobil rakes in $9.5 billion profit, on which it will pay a 13 percent tax rate, if that
Meteor Blades
Fri Apr 26, 2013 at 09:56 AM PDT

First-quarter earnings at the world's biggest company hit $9.5 billion, according to a release by ExxonMobil.

That gargantuan bottom line was no doubt padded just a smidge by the fact that Exxon gets $600 million in annual federal tax breaks. Every effort to eliminate these breaks—recently pushed by Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Robert Menendez of New Jersey—can't get through Congress. Surprise, surprise. Exxon pays an effective corporate income tax rate of about 13 percent, just over a third of the nominal rate of 35 percent.

One tax break is particularly egregious. Exxon (and other oil companies) don't have to pay eight cents a barrel into the federal Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund for tar sands oil. That's because tar sands oil gets an exemption from the tax because it's not "conventional oil."

Very convenient when your company spills a half-a-million gallons of ... uh ... unconventional oil somewhere as Exxon's Pegasus pipeline did on Easter Sunday in the little town of Mayflower, Arkansas. An incredible mess. For PR purposes, Exxon called this "oil." For tax purposes, however, it's "dilbit," diluted bitumen shipped from the tar sands of Alberta. The tar sands deposits are definitely unconventional "oil" that is dirtier, harder to extract, harder to refine, harder and more expensive to clean up, and viewed by many of its fans as North America's pathway to the elusive objective of energy independence.