Big Oil is getting to keep its billion-dollar federal tax breaks, for the time being.
On a mostly partisan vote, the U.S. Senate defeated an attempt to eliminate government subsidies for five top petroleum producers: BP, Exxon Mobil, Shell, Chevron and ConocoPhillips. The vote was 52 to 48, with three Democrats joining 45 Republicans in opposing the bill that had the backing of the Obama administration and fiscal watchdog groups. Although a majority of Senators voted in favor of advancing the bill, it needed 60 votes to proceed.
The legislation would have eliminated five different tax breaks that could have boosted federal revenues by $21 billion over 10 years.
Supporters of the plan argued that the Big Oil doesn’t need federal help because the companies’ profits are soaring. They also contend it is unfair to provide taxpayer-supported subsidies to businesses that keep raising the price of gasoline at the pump.
Republicans insisted the effort amounted to political grandstanding by Democrats seeking to gain points with voters for the 2012 election.
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Last year tax rates were:
XOM 40.5%
BP 36.6% (Based on 2009, 2010 op loss due to Macondo payments)
RDS-A 43.4%
CVX 43.9%
COP 39.6%
Gives an average tax rate of 40.8%
Now let’s see how much those great tech companies paid:
AAPL 24.3%
MSFT 13.9%
IBM 25.3%
T 29% (Based on 2009 because they actually got a tax rebate on Op Income of $19.5 bln in 2010… are you fucking kidding me?)
ORCL 23.2%
Gives average tax rate of 23.1%
Any questions????
Just one; why is there so much discrepancy ?
http://www.newser.com/story/118404/how-much-tax-do-exxon-mobil-big-oil-actually-pay.html
Exxon likes to count the sales and excise taxes it collects from you at the pump and forwards to the government as taxes paid by Exxon.
Cronk: The tax payments reported by the big oils include overseas tax payments for non-US operations.
Oil is a lot cheaper to extract in some of those non-US areas, so the companies are willing to produce there in spite of tax rates on oil profits that are well above US tax rates. Nigeria’s rates run as high as 85%.
Exxon’s 10-K shows that it paid an average rate above 50% on overseas oil profits in 2010.
In the U.S., it had earnings before tax of $7.7 billion and paid $1.3 billion in federal income taxes – roughly 17% of U.S.income.