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Read the rules in the OP before posting, please.In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up! NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action. |
On July 23 2013 10:19 oneofthem wrote:Show nested quote +On July 23 2013 10:14 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On July 23 2013 10:01 oneofthem wrote:
investing in protecting the environment is a long run project but it probably is one of the wisest things a country like the U.S. should be doing. very shortsighted. When appropriate they should be wise in any country  the u.s. isn't really in need of trading growth for environment, so i'd have to think only small groups benefit from destroying environmental regulation. it's not like we are a sustenance farming bunch that need to burn down forests to live.
Ahh, OK I can agree with that 
I wonder how the EPA would view the subsistence farmers though? Would their analysis still show a net benefit from not burning down the forests?
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
On July 23 2013 10:28 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On July 23 2013 10:19 oneofthem wrote:On July 23 2013 10:14 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On July 23 2013 10:01 oneofthem wrote:
investing in protecting the environment is a long run project but it probably is one of the wisest things a country like the U.S. should be doing. very shortsighted. When appropriate they should be wise in any country the u.s. isn't really in need of trading growth for environment, so i'd have to think only small groups benefit from destroying environmental regulation. it's not like we are a subsistence farming bunch that need to burn down forests to live. Ahh, OK I can agree with that I wonder how the EPA would view the subsistence farmers though? Would their analysis still show a net benefit from not burning down the forests?
at that point it's rather silly to do a cost benefit analysis, since those farmers would be operating under very poor technology and capital constraints so as to make "should they be burning forests" a secondary concern compared to "can they be made to be something other than subsistence farmers."
the overwhelming yes to the 2nd question overrides the tinkering with discount ratios and whatnot
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On July 23 2013 10:24 Danglars wrote:
I love that they include the make-work jobs they create in there. Take money from some people, give jobs to government workers and contractors, net jobs! I'd like to see next their proposals to pay a group of workers to dig a ditch and another to fill it in, because that's creating jobs and should be added to net benefits. Of course they can label their pollution and prescribe how it is cleaned up and when it's cleaned up enough.
Save the country billions in health care costs through regulation? You can cut their budget in half and still gain the best health care benefits. It's the difference between light handed regulation and heavy handed regulation that I'm talking about. Strip down the unnecessary stuff on top of basic environmental regulations, cut the cozy relationship between environmental activists, their lawyers, and the EPA, and let individuals be more responsible for their own energy costs rather than imposing federal will on companies.
Wow, that last bit is so blatantly corporatist I don't know what to say. You're talking about Socializing Cost, and Privatizing Profit. You're talking about "Corporations should not have responsibility, only individuals should have responsibility." Jesus dude, are you for real? Hate to break it to you, but corporations don't have human rights, because they aren't human. And they aren't what this country is built for. Society is built for humans.
Personally, I'm not really scared of corporations being sent to the gas chambers. It's not a concern to me. I wouldn't lose that much sleep over it. I say we do whatever the fuck we want with them for the benefit of us humans.
Impose away.
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On July 23 2013 10:24 Danglars wrote:
I love that they include the make-work jobs they create in there. Take money from some people, give jobs to government workers and contractors, net jobs! I'd like to see next their proposals to pay a group of workers to dig a ditch and another to fill it in, because that's creating jobs and should be added to net benefits. Of course they can label their pollution and prescribe how it is cleaned up and when it's cleaned up enough.
Save the country billions in health care costs through regulation? You can cut their budget in half and still gain the best health care benefits. It's the difference between light handed regulation and heavy handed regulation that I'm talking about. Strip down the unnecessary stuff on top of basic environmental regulations, cut the cozy relationship between environmental activists, their lawyers, and the EPA, and let individuals be more responsible for their own energy costs rather than imposing federal will on companies.
If conservatives like you took the same approach to the military's budget as you did to something like the EPA's budget, then maybe we'd be ready to talk about compromise. The exact same thing can be said about our military policy; the entire military budget is incredibly bloated and wasteful. Significant cuts could be done to the military and that money could go to actually helping Americans and we wouldn't suffer in terms of national security. Make other countries do their own fucking work, stop acting like bullies around the world, and simply focus on defending ourselves, and we will still be perfectly safe without wasting so much fucking money.
But of course that'll never happen. The only foreign policy that Republicans understand is one where we act like a fat bully on an elementary school playground.
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Thanks to disclosures made by Edward Snowden, Americans have learned that their email records are not necessarily safe from the National Security Agency—but a new ruling shows that they're not safe from big oil companies, either.
Last month, a federal court granted Chevron access to nine years of email metadata—which includes names, time stamps, and detailed location data and login info, but not content—belonging to activists, lawyers, and journalists who criticized the company for drilling in Ecuador and leaving behind a trail of toxic sludge and leaky pipelines. Since 1993, when the litigation began, Chevron has lost multiple appeals and has been ordered to pay plaintiffs from native communities about $19 billion to cover the cost of environmental damage. Chevron alleges that it is the victim of a mass extortion conspiracy, which is why the company is asking Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft, which owns Hotmail, to cough up the email data. When Lewis Kaplan, a federal judge in New York, granted the Microsoft subpoena last month, he ruled it didn't violate the First Amendment because Americans weren't among the people targeted.
Now Mother Jones has learned that the targeted accounts do include Americans—a revelation that calls the validity of the subpoena into question. The First Amendment protects the right to speak anonymously, and in cases involving Americans, courts have often quashed subpoenas seeking to discover the identities and locations of anonymous internet users. Earlier this year, a different federal judge quashed Chevron's attempts to seize documents from Amazon Watch, one of the company's most vocal critics. That judge said the subpoena was a violation of the group's First Amendment rights. In this case, though, that same protection has not been extended to activists, journalists, and lawyers' email metadata.
Source
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On July 23 2013 09:57 kmillz wrote:Show nested quote +On July 23 2013 09:17 kwizach wrote:On July 23 2013 08:52 Danglars wrote:On July 23 2013 06:18 Klondikebar wrote:
“In addition,” Rogers said, defending the enormous cuts to the EPA, “by holding back overly zealous and unnecessary environmental regulations, this bill can have a positive effect on our economy and will help encourage job growth.”
I love the underpants gnome theory at work here.
1. Slash budgets for departments that we don't like.
2. ?????
3. JOBS YALL!
And I'm also tired of the assumption that jobs are this end all be all of economics. They aren't. Improved standard of living is. If we just wanted everyone to be employed we could easily have full employment paying everyone to dig ditches. But we wouldn't cheer for a great economy then.
I guess I don't so much care about the cuts themselves. I am just getting really sick of every bit of legislation being rubber stamped cause somehow it magically creates jobs. The overly zealous and unnecessary regulations are exactly how it works to kill jobs. They seem to believe that the federal government is simply better than individuals at keeping their energy costs low, implementing energy standards and picking for them where to improve efficiency. People on the right have been documenting these things for ages. You don't need to go far to find specific areas that the EPA limits growth and adds costs unnecessarily for little or no gain. Heck, improving the standard of living is hardly the goal here. Lately, you have to question whether the preservation of this or that environmental sector is done for the sake of the environment itself and not people. Health and safety be damned for people, we see this regulation doing this and that for the "environment." Not to mention myriad environmental activist groups sue the EPA (e.g. under CAA and CWA) to then settle the lawsuit for the regulations, taxpayers getting billed for the legal fees and regulation implementation fees, and then companies given unreasonable compliance time-frames. I'm all for vastly cutting their budget to limit the harm. I'll just leave this here... New Study: The Economic Benefits of EPA Regulations Massively Outweigh The Costs
[A] new study from the White House’s Office of Management and Budget [...] found that the benefits EPA regulations bring to the economy far outweigh the costs.
The way this works is pretty straight-forward. Environmental regulations do impose compliance costs on businesses, and can raise prices, which hurt economic growth. But they also create jobs by requiring pollution clean-up and prevention efforts. And perhaps even more importantly, they save the economy billions by avoiding pollution’s deleterious health effects. Particles from smoke stacks, for example, are implicated in respiratory diseases, heart attacks, infections and a host of other ailments, all of which require billions in health care costs per year to treat. Preventing those particles from going into the air means healthier and more productive citizens, who can go spend that money on something other than making themselves well again. [...]
The OMB found that a decade’s worth of major federal rules had produced annual benefits to the U.S. economy of between $193 billion and $800 billion and impose aggregate costs of $57 billion to $84 billion. “These ranges are reported in 2001 dollars and reflect the uncertain benefits and costs of each rule,” the report noted. Source $193-800 billion added to the economy through creating pollution clean-up/prevention jobs and avoiding diseases through regulation? Is there a source for how they got these figures?
Yes, the study itself.
On July 23 2013 10:24 Danglars wrote:
I love that they include the make-work jobs they create in there. Take money from some people, give jobs to government workers and contractors, net jobs! I'd like to see next their proposals to pay a group of workers to dig a ditch and another to fill it in, because that's creating jobs and should be added to net benefits. Of course they can label their pollution and prescribe how it is cleaned up and when it's cleaned up enough.
They mention job creation in the private sector as well as in the public sector. Also, from the original article:
[I]t’s worth pointing out that similar findings have been regularly dug up by other researchers. In 2011, an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found that job loss due to increased energy prices from MATS would be swamped by new jobs in pollution abatement and control. It also found that for each major EPA rule finalized by the Obama Administration at the time, annual benefits exceeded costs by $10 to $95 billion a piece. EPI even returned to the question in 2012, and found net job gains from MATS would reach 117,000 to 135,000 in 2015. [...]
Surveys of small businesses routinely fail to find compelling evidence that firms view taxes and regulations as a major impediment to hiring, an EPA-mandated clean-up of the Chesapeake BAY is anticipated to create 35 times as many jobs as the proposed construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, and jobs in the coal industry actually increased by 10 percent after the EPA cracked down on mountaintop-removal mining in 2009.
On July 23 2013 10:24 Danglars wrote:
Save the country billions in health care costs through regulation? You can cut their budget in half and still gain the best health care benefits.
Citation needed.
On July 23 2013 10:24 Danglars wrote:
It's the difference between light handed regulation and heavy handed regulation that I'm talking about. Strip down the unnecessary stuff on top of basic environmental regulations, cut the cozy relationship between environmental activists, their lawyers, and the EPA, and let individuals be more responsible for their own energy costs rather than imposing federal will on companies.
Letting individuals be more responsible for their own energy costs is the baseline. The study clearly shows the economy benefits from doing more than that - in addition to the environment obviously benefiting from it.
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In General From fiscal year 2003 (FY 2003) through FY 2012, Federal agencies published 37,786 final rules in the Federal Register. OMB reviewed 3,203 of these final rules under Executive Orders 12866 and 13563. Of these OMB-reviewed rules, 536 are considered major rules, primarily as a result of their anticipated impact on the economy (i.e., an impact of $100 million in at least one year). It is important to emphasize that many major rules are budgetary transfer rules, and may not impose significant regulatory costs on the private sector.
So absurd on its face. In a free democracy, why do you have to implement 37,786 rules in a year from agencies appointed by the executive? Operating as the fourth branch of government for how many years now?
In the case of the EPA rules reported here, however, a substantial portion of the uncertainty is similar across several rules, including (1) the uncertainty in the reduction of premature deaths associated with reduction in particulate matter and (2) the uncertainty in the monetary value of reducing mortality risk.
Yep. Let's just make assumptions that agree with our ends. They are, after all, working for the man that may hire or fire people in this positions. Wonder if the CBO will be commissioned to do a cost analysis of EPA/Fed Agency rules implementations for the last fiscal year.
I invite people that read the report to look on the values they propose for the "Value of a Statistical Life" or VSL. I might even agree with people that say the EPA saves lives, and move on to what they think is fair $1,000/life $10,000/life etc. It factors in the billions with the fabricated cost savings. With the lack of independent research into the year in review, all we are left with is the government promising the the government's study is right on the money. I already posted last page links to the analysis of the growth in costs of the CAA (Legal fees for the activist/EPA is not included in that study, nor is weight given to the accelerated implementation deadlines that result from the settlement of these cases). If you wonder what the other side of the story is, check it out.
If we're talking about comparing wasteful spending from one area to another, since I saw someone bring up military spending, try looking at what they clock in at as part of the federal budget. Defense has rather steadily decreased from 60% of the federal budget 50 years ago to 20% today. Entitlement spending has increased from 30% to 60% in the same time-frame.
I'm down for eliminating many bases overseas (though not as many nearby to Iran and North Korea). There's certainly waste in the military budget. However, education, energy, EPA, HUD, HHS, and the rest are the progressive left's sacred cows. Non-defense discretionary spending has surged in the last ten years compared to defense (OMB FY 2013 Report) so that's where I'd start with. I say this if there's people here truly serious about cutting the federal deficit and not biased towards cutting the American military.
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Can't you guys save a boat load of money by ending oil subsidies? It's not the 90's where $15 oil is putting them on the verge of bankruptcy.
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On July 23 2013 14:20 kwizach wrote:Show nested quote +On July 23 2013 09:57 kmillz wrote:On July 23 2013 09:17 kwizach wrote:On July 23 2013 08:52 Danglars wrote:On July 23 2013 06:18 Klondikebar wrote:
“In addition,” Rogers said, defending the enormous cuts to the EPA, “by holding back overly zealous and unnecessary environmental regulations, this bill can have a positive effect on our economy and will help encourage job growth.”
I love the underpants gnome theory at work here.
1. Slash budgets for departments that we don't like.
2. ?????
3. JOBS YALL!
And I'm also tired of the assumption that jobs are this end all be all of economics. They aren't. Improved standard of living is. If we just wanted everyone to be employed we could easily have full employment paying everyone to dig ditches. But we wouldn't cheer for a great economy then.
I guess I don't so much care about the cuts themselves. I am just getting really sick of every bit of legislation being rubber stamped cause somehow it magically creates jobs. The overly zealous and unnecessary regulations are exactly how it works to kill jobs. They seem to believe that the federal government is simply better than individuals at keeping their energy costs low, implementing energy standards and picking for them where to improve efficiency. People on the right have been documenting these things for ages. You don't need to go far to find specific areas that the EPA limits growth and adds costs unnecessarily for little or no gain. Heck, improving the standard of living is hardly the goal here. Lately, you have to question whether the preservation of this or that environmental sector is done for the sake of the environment itself and not people. Health and safety be damned for people, we see this regulation doing this and that for the "environment." Not to mention myriad environmental activist groups sue the EPA (e.g. under CAA and CWA) to then settle the lawsuit for the regulations, taxpayers getting billed for the legal fees and regulation implementation fees, and then companies given unreasonable compliance time-frames. I'm all for vastly cutting their budget to limit the harm. I'll just leave this here... New Study: The Economic Benefits of EPA Regulations Massively Outweigh The Costs
[A] new study from the White House’s Office of Management and Budget [...] found that the benefits EPA regulations bring to the economy far outweigh the costs.
The way this works is pretty straight-forward. Environmental regulations do impose compliance costs on businesses, and can raise prices, which hurt economic growth. But they also create jobs by requiring pollution clean-up and prevention efforts. And perhaps even more importantly, they save the economy billions by avoiding pollution’s deleterious health effects. Particles from smoke stacks, for example, are implicated in respiratory diseases, heart attacks, infections and a host of other ailments, all of which require billions in health care costs per year to treat. Preventing those particles from going into the air means healthier and more productive citizens, who can go spend that money on something other than making themselves well again. [...]
The OMB found that a decade’s worth of major federal rules had produced annual benefits to the U.S. economy of between $193 billion and $800 billion and impose aggregate costs of $57 billion to $84 billion. “These ranges are reported in 2001 dollars and reflect the uncertain benefits and costs of each rule,” the report noted. Source $193-800 billion added to the economy through creating pollution clean-up/prevention jobs and avoiding diseases through regulation? Is there a source for how they got these figures? Yes, the study itself. Show nested quote +On July 23 2013 10:24 Danglars wrote:
I love that they include the make-work jobs they create in there. Take money from some people, give jobs to government workers and contractors, net jobs! I'd like to see next their proposals to pay a group of workers to dig a ditch and another to fill it in, because that's creating jobs and should be added to net benefits. Of course they can label their pollution and prescribe how it is cleaned up and when it's cleaned up enough. They mention job creation in the private sector as well as in the public sector. Also, from the original article: Show nested quote +[I]t’s worth pointing out that similar findings have been regularly dug up by other researchers. In 2011, an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found that job loss due to increased energy prices from MATS would be swamped by new jobs in pollution abatement and control. It also found that for each major EPA rule finalized by the Obama Administration at the time, annual benefits exceeded costs by $10 to $95 billion a piece. EPI even returned to the question in 2012, and found net job gains from MATS would reach 117,000 to 135,000 in 2015. [...]
Surveys of small businesses routinely fail to find compelling evidence that firms view taxes and regulations as a major impediment to hiring, an EPA-mandated clean-up of the Chesapeake BAY is anticipated to create 35 times as many jobs as the proposed construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, and jobs in the coal industry actually increased by 10 percent after the EPA cracked down on mountaintop-removal mining in 2009. Show nested quote +On July 23 2013 10:24 Danglars wrote:
Save the country billions in health care costs through regulation? You can cut their budget in half and still gain the best health care benefits. Citation needed. Show nested quote +On July 23 2013 10:24 Danglars wrote:
It's the difference between light handed regulation and heavy handed regulation that I'm talking about. Strip down the unnecessary stuff on top of basic environmental regulations, cut the cozy relationship between environmental activists, their lawyers, and the EPA, and let individuals be more responsible for their own energy costs rather than imposing federal will on companies. Letting individuals be more responsible for their own energy costs is the baseline. The study clearly shows the economy benefits from doing more than that - in addition to the environment obviously benefiting from it.
OMB doesn't use dynamic scoring...
From their own report...
Jorgenson and Wilcoxen modeled dynamic simulations with and without environmental regulation on long-term growth in the U.S. to assess the effects and reported that the long-term cost of regulation is a 2.59% reduction in Gross National Product.
Greenstone, List, and Syverson (2011) analyze plant-level production data to estimate the effects of environmental regulations on manufacturing plants’ total factor productivity (TFP) levels. Using the Clean Air Act Amendments’ division of counties into pollutant-specific nonattainment and attainment categories, they find that among surviving polluting plants, a nonattainment designation is associated with a roughly 2.6 percent decline in TFP.
Even the "positive" citations are tepid I.E.:
Kahn examines census and state data and finds that better educated, wealthier populations experienced cleaner air, but that poorer, less educated populations experienced a greater overall improvement in air quality between 1980 and 1998 in California. During this time period, the exposure of the Hispanic population to pollution also fell sharply along with exposure differentials between richer and poorer people. The author concludes that, “[g]iven the overall trend in improvements for certain demographic groups, it appears that regulation under the Clean Air Act has helped, and not economically harmed, the ‘have nots.’"
Translated: We cannot be sure that regulation has helped people, instead of just the overall trend towards improved living standards over the years, but if it has, its only helped one segment of the populace (without taking into account costs for other segments).
In other words, your own study fails to support the conclusions that you assert from it.
Plus, even if accepted, the benefits are probably no more of a correlation, much like the correlation between OSHA and the reduction in workplace accidents SEE:
+ Show Spoiler +
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On July 23 2013 15:51 SnipedSoul wrote:
Can't you guys save a boat load of money by ending oil subsidies? It's not the 90's where $15 oil is putting them on the verge of bankruptcy.
The biggest oil subsidy is for government (DOE) oil subsidies in the form of R&D (Oil, Gas, Coal). Obama's FY 2012 budget could cut 400$mil if allowances are made to not reduce his figures for maintaining the strategic oil reserve. Other than that, it's a drop in the bucket compared to existing Agricultural subsidies and Green Energy subsidies. Oil companies already suffer a 41% marginal tax rate compared to the average S&P's 26% figure, so the tax credits are hardly subsidies (Excepting to EOR and MWP. Obvious subsidies that should be cut from tax code, not figuring in the hundreds of millions though).
So no, ending oil subsidies that are actually oil subsidies does not save a boat load. It saves a slow trickle, and mostly for federal expenditures on federal agencies and not private companies.
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On July 23 2013 16:22 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On July 23 2013 15:51 SnipedSoul wrote:
Can't you guys save a boat load of money by ending oil subsidies? It's not the 90's where $15 oil is putting them on the verge of bankruptcy. The biggest oil subsidy is for government (DOE) oil subsidies in the form of R&D (Oil, Gas, Coal). Obama's FY 2012 budget could cut 400$mil if allowances are made to not reduce his figures for maintaining the strategic oil reserve. Other than that, it's a drop in the bucket compared to existing Agricultural subsidies and Green Energy subsidies. Oil companies already suffer a 41% marginal tax rate compared to the average S&P's 26% figure, so the tax credits are hardly subsidies (Excepting to EOR and MWP. Obvious subsidies that should be cut from tax code, not figuring in the hundreds of millions though). So no, ending oil subsidies that are actually oil subsidies does not save a boat load. It saves a slow trickle, and mostly for federal expenditures on federal agencies and not private companies.
Yawn, that's the marginal tax rate. Which should be high, because it's a marginal tax rate. Their effective tax rate is more like 13%.
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On July 23 2013 20:46 DoubleReed wrote:Show nested quote +On July 23 2013 16:22 Danglars wrote:On July 23 2013 15:51 SnipedSoul wrote:
Can't you guys save a boat load of money by ending oil subsidies? It's not the 90's where $15 oil is putting them on the verge of bankruptcy. The biggest oil subsidy is for government (DOE) oil subsidies in the form of R&D (Oil, Gas, Coal). Obama's FY 2012 budget could cut 400$mil if allowances are made to not reduce his figures for maintaining the strategic oil reserve. Other than that, it's a drop in the bucket compared to existing Agricultural subsidies and Green Energy subsidies. Oil companies already suffer a 41% marginal tax rate compared to the average S&P's 26% figure, so the tax credits are hardly subsidies (Excepting to EOR and MWP. Obvious subsidies that should be cut from tax code, not figuring in the hundreds of millions though). So no, ending oil subsidies that are actually oil subsidies does not save a boat load. It saves a slow trickle, and mostly for federal expenditures on federal agencies and not private companies. Yawn, that's the marginal tax rate. Which should be high, because it's a marginal tax rate. Their effective tax rate is more like 13%.
If you read that sentence again, I think you'll find that I don't compare the marginal tax rate to an absolute one, but rather two things that are relative. If there's any interest in continuing to discuss tax laws on oil companies, it matters what you consider subsidies.
Perhaps you have a view on the guy I was responding to. Can't we save a boat load of money by ending oil subsidies? It's not the 1990s when it might be thought they were in danger of bankruptcy.
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On July 23 2013 21:29 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On July 23 2013 20:46 DoubleReed wrote:On July 23 2013 16:22 Danglars wrote:On July 23 2013 15:51 SnipedSoul wrote:
Can't you guys save a boat load of money by ending oil subsidies? It's not the 90's where $15 oil is putting them on the verge of bankruptcy. The biggest oil subsidy is for government (DOE) oil subsidies in the form of R&D (Oil, Gas, Coal). Obama's FY 2012 budget could cut 400$mil if allowances are made to not reduce his figures for maintaining the strategic oil reserve. Other than that, it's a drop in the bucket compared to existing Agricultural subsidies and Green Energy subsidies. Oil companies already suffer a 41% marginal tax rate compared to the average S&P's 26% figure, so the tax credits are hardly subsidies (Excepting to EOR and MWP. Obvious subsidies that should be cut from tax code, not figuring in the hundreds of millions though). So no, ending oil subsidies that are actually oil subsidies does not save a boat load. It saves a slow trickle, and mostly for federal expenditures on federal agencies and not private companies. Yawn, that's the marginal tax rate. Which should be high, because it's a marginal tax rate. Their effective tax rate is more like 13%. If you read that sentence again, I think you'll find that I don't compare the marginal tax rate to an absolute one, but rather two things that are relative. If there's any interest in continuing to discuss tax laws on oil companies, it matters what you consider subsidies. Perhaps you have a view on the guy I was responding to. Can't we save a boat load of money by ending oil subsidies? It's not the 1990s when it might be thought they were in danger of bankruptcy.
The problem with trying to end Oil subsidies is the amount of politicians that major oil companies have bought. It doesnt matter how good of an idea it is and how obsolete the subsidies are when they cant get through Congress.
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On July 23 2013 21:29 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On July 23 2013 20:46 DoubleReed wrote:On July 23 2013 16:22 Danglars wrote:On July 23 2013 15:51 SnipedSoul wrote:
Can't you guys save a boat load of money by ending oil subsidies? It's not the 90's where $15 oil is putting them on the verge of bankruptcy. The biggest oil subsidy is for government (DOE) oil subsidies in the form of R&D (Oil, Gas, Coal). Obama's FY 2012 budget could cut 400$mil if allowances are made to not reduce his figures for maintaining the strategic oil reserve. Other than that, it's a drop in the bucket compared to existing Agricultural subsidies and Green Energy subsidies. Oil companies already suffer a 41% marginal tax rate compared to the average S&P's 26% figure, so the tax credits are hardly subsidies (Excepting to EOR and MWP. Obvious subsidies that should be cut from tax code, not figuring in the hundreds of millions though). So no, ending oil subsidies that are actually oil subsidies does not save a boat load. It saves a slow trickle, and mostly for federal expenditures on federal agencies and not private companies. Yawn, that's the marginal tax rate. Which should be high, because it's a marginal tax rate. Their effective tax rate is more like 13%. If you read that sentence again, I think you'll find that I don't compare the marginal tax rate to an absolute one, but rather two things that are relative. If there's any interest in continuing to discuss tax laws on oil companies, it matters what you consider subsidies. Perhaps you have a view on the guy I was responding to. Can't we save a boat load of money by ending oil subsidies? It's not the 1990s when it might be thought they were in danger of bankruptcy.
I don't know what "average S&P 26% figure" refers to, so no, reading the sentence again does not help. Provide a link or something. It sounds like you're comparing average tax rates to marginal tax rates.
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On July 23 2013 15:43 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +In General From fiscal year 2003 (FY 2003) through FY 2012, Federal agencies published 37,786 final rules in the Federal Register. OMB reviewed 3,203 of these final rules under Executive Orders 12866 and 13563. Of these OMB-reviewed rules, 536 are considered major rules, primarily as a result of their anticipated impact on the economy (i.e., an impact of $100 million in at least one year). It is important to emphasize that many major rules are budgetary transfer rules, and may not impose significant regulatory costs on the private sector. So absurd on its face. In a free democracy, why do you have to implement 37,786 rules in a year from agencies appointed by the executive? Operating as the fourth branch of government for how many years now?
Unless I'm reading this sentence wrong, it says the 37,768 rules were published from 2003 through 2012, no in one year. And the agencies in question are part of the executive branch, which is the third branch of government, so I'm not sure what your second question is all about.
On July 23 2013 15:43 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +
In the case of the EPA rules reported here, however, a substantial portion of the uncertainty is similar across several rules, including (1) the uncertainty in the reduction of premature deaths associated with reduction in particulate matter and (2) the uncertainty in the monetary value of reducing mortality risk.
Yep. Let's just make assumptions that agree with our ends. They are, after all, working for the man that may hire or fire people in this positions. Wonder if the CBO will be commissioned to do a cost analysis of EPA/Fed Agency rules implementations for the last fiscal year.
Did you search for "uncertainty" in the document just to make a point? The report addresses this uncertainty notably by providing ranges of estimates, and the bottom estimate for the benefits still far outweighs the top estimate for the costs. With regards to your objection, it's a bit too easy to declare the study can't be trusted simply because it comes from executive - it's true that it's important to know who wrote it, but if you're going to discard it your position should at least be founded on objections you have with regards to the content itself (errors in measurement, poor methodology, etc.). The link I provided you with also mentions other studies, not done by the executive branch, which corroborate the findings.
On July 23 2013 16:00 cLutZ wrote:Show nested quote +On July 23 2013 14:20 kwizach wrote:On July 23 2013 09:57 kmillz wrote:On July 23 2013 09:17 kwizach wrote:On July 23 2013 08:52 Danglars wrote:On July 23 2013 06:18 Klondikebar wrote:
“In addition,” Rogers said, defending the enormous cuts to the EPA, “by holding back overly zealous and unnecessary environmental regulations, this bill can have a positive effect on our economy and will help encourage job growth.”
I love the underpants gnome theory at work here.
1. Slash budgets for departments that we don't like.
2. ?????
3. JOBS YALL!
And I'm also tired of the assumption that jobs are this end all be all of economics. They aren't. Improved standard of living is. If we just wanted everyone to be employed we could easily have full employment paying everyone to dig ditches. But we wouldn't cheer for a great economy then.
I guess I don't so much care about the cuts themselves. I am just getting really sick of every bit of legislation being rubber stamped cause somehow it magically creates jobs. The overly zealous and unnecessary regulations are exactly how it works to kill jobs. They seem to believe that the federal government is simply better than individuals at keeping their energy costs low, implementing energy standards and picking for them where to improve efficiency. People on the right have been documenting these things for ages. You don't need to go far to find specific areas that the EPA limits growth and adds costs unnecessarily for little or no gain. Heck, improving the standard of living is hardly the goal here. Lately, you have to question whether the preservation of this or that environmental sector is done for the sake of the environment itself and not people. Health and safety be damned for people, we see this regulation doing this and that for the "environment." Not to mention myriad environmental activist groups sue the EPA (e.g. under CAA and CWA) to then settle the lawsuit for the regulations, taxpayers getting billed for the legal fees and regulation implementation fees, and then companies given unreasonable compliance time-frames. I'm all for vastly cutting their budget to limit the harm. I'll just leave this here... New Study: The Economic Benefits of EPA Regulations Massively Outweigh The Costs
[A] new study from the White House’s Office of Management and Budget [...] found that the benefits EPA regulations bring to the economy far outweigh the costs.
The way this works is pretty straight-forward. Environmental regulations do impose compliance costs on businesses, and can raise prices, which hurt economic growth. But they also create jobs by requiring pollution clean-up and prevention efforts. And perhaps even more importantly, they save the economy billions by avoiding pollution’s deleterious health effects. Particles from smoke stacks, for example, are implicated in respiratory diseases, heart attacks, infections and a host of other ailments, all of which require billions in health care costs per year to treat. Preventing those particles from going into the air means healthier and more productive citizens, who can go spend that money on something other than making themselves well again. [...]
The OMB found that a decade’s worth of major federal rules had produced annual benefits to the U.S. economy of between $193 billion and $800 billion and impose aggregate costs of $57 billion to $84 billion. “These ranges are reported in 2001 dollars and reflect the uncertain benefits and costs of each rule,” the report noted. Source $193-800 billion added to the economy through creating pollution clean-up/prevention jobs and avoiding diseases through regulation? Is there a source for how they got these figures? Yes, the study itself. On July 23 2013 10:24 Danglars wrote:
I love that they include the make-work jobs they create in there. Take money from some people, give jobs to government workers and contractors, net jobs! I'd like to see next their proposals to pay a group of workers to dig a ditch and another to fill it in, because that's creating jobs and should be added to net benefits. Of course they can label their pollution and prescribe how it is cleaned up and when it's cleaned up enough. They mention job creation in the private sector as well as in the public sector. Also, from the original article: t’s worth pointing out that similar findings have been regularly dug up by other researchers. In 2011, an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found that job loss due to increased energy prices from MATS would be swamped by new jobs in pollution abatement and control. It also found that for each major EPA rule finalized by the Obama Administration at the time, annual benefits exceeded costs by $10 to $95 billion a piece. EPI even returned to the question in 2012, and found net job gains from MATS would reach 117,000 to 135,000 in 2015. [...]
Surveys of small businesses routinely fail to find compelling evidence that firms view taxes and regulations as a major impediment to hiring, an EPA-mandated clean-up of the Chesapeake BAY is anticipated to create 35 times as many jobs as the proposed construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, and jobs in the coal industry actually increased by 10 percent after the EPA cracked down on mountaintop-removal mining in 2009. On July 23 2013 10:24 Danglars wrote:
Save the country billions in health care costs through regulation? You can cut their budget in half and still gain the best health care benefits. Citation needed. On July 23 2013 10:24 Danglars wrote:
It's the difference between light handed regulation and heavy handed regulation that I'm talking about. Strip down the unnecessary stuff on top of basic environmental regulations, cut the cozy relationship between environmental activists, their lawyers, and the EPA, and let individuals be more responsible for their own energy costs rather than imposing federal will on companies. Letting individuals be more responsible for their own energy costs is the baseline. The study clearly shows the economy benefits from doing more than that - in addition to the environment obviously benefiting from it. OMB doesn't use dynamic scoring... From their own report... Show nested quote +Jorgenson and Wilcoxen modeled dynamic simulations with and without environmental regulation on long-term growth in the U.S. to assess the effects and reported that the long-term cost of regulation is a 2.59% reduction in Gross National Product.
Did you read that paper? Here's the relevant paragraph they put in their introduction:
We have not attempted to assess the benefits resulting from a cleaner environment. We have not accounted for consumption benefits resulting from environmental cleanup or production benefits associated with pollution abatement. The conclusions of this study cannot be taken to imply that pollution control is too burdensome or, for that matter, insufficiently restrictive.
Your other quote is another cherry-pick among several studies in the literature review that show differing results and do not focus on the overall impact at the US level. I could give you another such example in Berman, Eli and Linda T.M. Bui. “Environmental Regulation and Labor Demand: Evidence from the South Coast Air Basin.”, Journal of Public Economics, 2001, 79: pp. 265-295, which state:
Our estimates of zero employment effects contradict the conventional wisdom of employers (mostly outside of refining) that environmental regulation ‘costs jobs’ (Goodstein, 1996) so a comment is in order. Beyond posturing in public debate, employers may honestly overestimate the job loss induced by a pervasive regulation by confusing the firm’s product demand curve with that of the industry. The former is more price elastic due to competition from other firms. If all firms in the industry are faced with the same cost-increasing regulatory change and product demand is inelastic, the output of individual firms may be only slightly reduced. In that case, the negative effect on employment through the output elasticity of labor demand may well be dominated by a positive effect through the marginal rate of technical substitution between PACE and labor, leading to a net increases in employment as a result of regulation
[...]
Though the public debate has centered around employment effects, a full accounting of the costs of regulation should properly focus on the effects of regulation on productivity and the benefits in health and other outcomes. Related research on South Coast refineries (Berman and Bui, 1998) has found productivity gains between 1987–92, in contrast to declining productivity in comparison regions. A symmetric analysis of the benefits of the South Coast regulations in improved air quality and health outcomes of residents would form the basis for a much more complete economic evaluation of this important and unprecedented episode in air quality regulation.
On July 23 2013 16:00 cLutZ wrote:Even the "positive" citations are tepid I.E.: Show nested quote +Kahn examines census and state data and finds that better educated, wealthier populations experienced cleaner air, but that poorer, less educated populations experienced a greater overall improvement in air quality between 1980 and 1998 in California. During this time period, the exposure of the Hispanic population to pollution also fell sharply along with exposure differentials between richer and poorer people. The author concludes that, “[g]iven the overall trend in improvements for certain demographic groups, it appears that regulation under the Clean Air Act has helped, and not economically harmed, the ‘have nots.’" Translated: We cannot be sure that regulation has helped people, instead of just the overall trend towards improved living standards over the years, but if it has, its only helped one segment of the populace (without taking into account costs for other segments).
That's not what it says at all. Are you being dishonest on purpose or are you simply incapable of reading the paragraph you quoted yourself?
On July 23 2013 16:00 cLutZ wrote:
In other words, your own study fails to support the conclusions that you assert from it.
In other words, it doesn't.
On July 23 2013 16:00 cLutZ wrote:Plus, even if accepted, the benefits are probably no more of a correlation, much like the correlation between OSHA and the reduction in workplace accidents SEE: + Show Spoiler +
I'll be waiting for you to show us that they are.
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On July 23 2013 20:46 DoubleReed wrote:Show nested quote +On July 23 2013 16:22 Danglars wrote:On July 23 2013 15:51 SnipedSoul wrote:
Can't you guys save a boat load of money by ending oil subsidies? It's not the 90's where $15 oil is putting them on the verge of bankruptcy. The biggest oil subsidy is for government (DOE) oil subsidies in the form of R&D (Oil, Gas, Coal). Obama's FY 2012 budget could cut 400$mil if allowances are made to not reduce his figures for maintaining the strategic oil reserve. Other than that, it's a drop in the bucket compared to existing Agricultural subsidies and Green Energy subsidies. Oil companies already suffer a 41% marginal tax rate compared to the average S&P's 26% figure, so the tax credits are hardly subsidies (Excepting to EOR and MWP. Obvious subsidies that should be cut from tax code, not figuring in the hundreds of millions though). So no, ending oil subsidies that are actually oil subsidies does not save a boat load. It saves a slow trickle, and mostly for federal expenditures on federal agencies and not private companies. Yawn, that's the marginal tax rate. Which should be high, because it's a marginal tax rate. Their effective tax rate is more like 13%.
Exxon paid an effective tax rate of 39.43% last year. Between 2003 and 2012 it paid a low rate of 34.43% and a high of 44.69%.
Source
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On July 24 2013 02:11 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On July 23 2013 20:46 DoubleReed wrote:On July 23 2013 16:22 Danglars wrote:On July 23 2013 15:51 SnipedSoul wrote:
Can't you guys save a boat load of money by ending oil subsidies? It's not the 90's where $15 oil is putting them on the verge of bankruptcy. The biggest oil subsidy is for government (DOE) oil subsidies in the form of R&D (Oil, Gas, Coal). Obama's FY 2012 budget could cut 400$mil if allowances are made to not reduce his figures for maintaining the strategic oil reserve. Other than that, it's a drop in the bucket compared to existing Agricultural subsidies and Green Energy subsidies. Oil companies already suffer a 41% marginal tax rate compared to the average S&P's 26% figure, so the tax credits are hardly subsidies (Excepting to EOR and MWP. Obvious subsidies that should be cut from tax code, not figuring in the hundreds of millions though). So no, ending oil subsidies that are actually oil subsidies does not save a boat load. It saves a slow trickle, and mostly for federal expenditures on federal agencies and not private companies. Yawn, that's the marginal tax rate. Which should be high, because it's a marginal tax rate. Their effective tax rate is more like 13%. Exxon paid an effective tax rate of 39.43% last year. Between 2003 and 2012 it paid a low rate of 34.43% and a high of 44.69%. Source
Unfortunately. those numbers have been called into question numerous times.
Reuters compares the 45 percent tax rate Exxon claims it pays to the effective rate estimated by Citizens for Tax Justice — a rate that’s even lower than Mitt Romney’s tax rate. Chevron, which made $26.9 billion profit in 2011, paid 19 percent:
Citizens for Tax Justice considers U.S. profits and U.S. taxes paid only. By that measure, Exxon Mobil paid 13 percent of its U.S. income in taxes after deductions and benefits in 2011, according to a Reuters calculation of securities filings.
It is a far cry from the 35 percent top corporate tax rate.
Still, the three-year average for telecom companies is 8 percent; for information technology services companies, it is 2.5 percent, according to CTJ.
Chevron CEO John Watson recently claimed “We’re the highest taxed industry that I’m aware of” while the American Petroleum Institute has claimed the industry pays a tax rate at more than 40 percent. But as Reuters explains, the oil industry uses a different methodology to claim it pays an artificially higher tax rate to the public. The industry “lumps together U.S. and foreign taxes. It includes taxes that are deferred and thus not paid yet. U.S. companies must pay taxes on profits earned abroad, but they can defer these taxes until they bring the cash into the country.” The big five use this tactic of hoarding cash oversees in tax havens, cutting their tax rates drastically. Exxon uses at least 20 tax shelters. These tax loopholes permit Exxon to pay a rate in-line with Mitt Romney, who’s also notorious for tax dodging.
Exxon Mobil’s Tax Rate Drops To 13 Percent, After Making 35 Percent More Profits On Rising Gas Prices In 2011
Sure, it's thinkprogress, but the fact remains that Big Oil likes to do some tricky things with how it describes its taxation.
Here's the Reuter's article it links to as well.
BIG OIL EARNS BIG
Four of the five biggest oil companies ranked among the top 10 most profitable companies in 2011, according to Fortune, with collective profits of about $80 billion. BP Plc, beset by costs from the Gulf oil spill, had losses, bringing down the average.
The biggest oil companies' tax rates are relatively high when the foreign taxes that they pay are included. On a U.S.-only basis, their rates vary.
There are many ways to calculate how much a company actually pays in U.S. taxes. One roadblock to making independent tax rate estimates is that tax filings are confidential, and filings with securities regulators use a different accounting method.
"Most of what they are putting on their financial statements doesn't really tie to what they are putting into their tax returns," said George Yin, a former chief of staff at the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation.
When calculating the headline tax rates it displays to the public, the industry lumps together U.S. and foreign taxes. It includes taxes that are deferred and thus not paid yet. U.S. companies must pay taxes on profits earned abroad, but they can defer these taxes until they bring the cash into the country.
That is the method behind the American Petroleum Institute's 41 percent estimate for the industry as a whole.
Citizens for Tax Justice considers U.S. profits and U.S. taxes paid only. By that measure, Exxon Mobil paid 13 percent of its U.S. income in taxes after deductions and benefits in 2011, according to a Reuters calculation of securities filings.
Chevron paid about 19 percent by that method, near CTJ's average for all industries.
It is a far cry from the 35 percent top corporate tax rate.
Still, the three-year average for telecom companies is 8 percent; for information technology services companies, it is 2.5 percent, according to CTJ.
"A lot of the techniques that multinationals use to reduce taxes are simply not available to big energy companies," said Howard Gleckman, a fellow at the Tax Policy Center, a centrist think tank.
BIG OIL LACKS IP EDGE
One way big technology and drug companies cut U.S. taxes is by shifting intellectual property income to lower-tax countries. Oil and gas companies, in general, don't benefit from that.
Bob McIntyre, president of Citizens for Tax Justice, said the fact that oil companies still drill in high-tax countries like Saudi Arabia proves they will keep drilling if their U.S. taxes go up. "Their foreign tax rates are very high, and they don't leave Saudi Arabia," McIntyre said.
One major tax break for energy companies is a nearly century-old benefit letting them deduct "intangible drilling costs" (IDC) immediately rather than over time.
Most of the IDC is for the labor costs of drilling a well.
Legislation drafted by Democratic Senator Robert Menendez would limit this break, among others. Ending it completely would raise $14 billion over a decade, according to the White House.
Energy companies liken this benefit to the research and development tax break employed by companies like Apple Inc.
"All the labor (that) tech companies spend on research and development, everything that Apple spends designing the next new product, they recover," said Brian Johnson, a tax expert at the American Petroleum Institute. "Cost recovery is cost recovery."
Not exactly. Many tax experts across the political spectrum said the IDC is a clear exception made for oil. As a rule, expenses that produce income in the future are not immediately deductible.
Analysis: Gas price spike revives fight over energy taxes
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On July 24 2013 02:15 farvacola wrote:Show nested quote +On July 24 2013 02:11 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On July 23 2013 20:46 DoubleReed wrote:On July 23 2013 16:22 Danglars wrote:On July 23 2013 15:51 SnipedSoul wrote:
Can't you guys save a boat load of money by ending oil subsidies? It's not the 90's where $15 oil is putting them on the verge of bankruptcy. The biggest oil subsidy is for government (DOE) oil subsidies in the form of R&D (Oil, Gas, Coal). Obama's FY 2012 budget could cut 400$mil if allowances are made to not reduce his figures for maintaining the strategic oil reserve. Other than that, it's a drop in the bucket compared to existing Agricultural subsidies and Green Energy subsidies. Oil companies already suffer a 41% marginal tax rate compared to the average S&P's 26% figure, so the tax credits are hardly subsidies (Excepting to EOR and MWP. Obvious subsidies that should be cut from tax code, not figuring in the hundreds of millions though). So no, ending oil subsidies that are actually oil subsidies does not save a boat load. It saves a slow trickle, and mostly for federal expenditures on federal agencies and not private companies. Yawn, that's the marginal tax rate. Which should be high, because it's a marginal tax rate. Their effective tax rate is more like 13%. Exxon paid an effective tax rate of 39.43% last year. Between 2003 and 2012 it paid a low rate of 34.43% and a high of 44.69%. Source Unfortunately. those numbers have been called into question numerous times. Show nested quote +Reuters compares the 45 percent tax rate Exxon claims it pays to the effective rate estimated by Citizens for Tax Justice — a rate that’s even lower than Mitt Romney’s tax rate. Chevron, which made $26.9 billion profit in 2011, paid 19 percent:
Citizens for Tax Justice considers U.S. profits and U.S. taxes paid only. By that measure, Exxon Mobil paid 13 percent of its U.S. income in taxes after deductions and benefits in 2011, according to a Reuters calculation of securities filings.
It is a far cry from the 35 percent top corporate tax rate.
Still, the three-year average for telecom companies is 8 percent; for information technology services companies, it is 2.5 percent, according to CTJ.
Chevron CEO John Watson recently claimed “We’re the highest taxed industry that I’m aware of” while the American Petroleum Institute has claimed the industry pays a tax rate at more than 40 percent. But as Reuters explains, the oil industry uses a different methodology to claim it pays an artificially higher tax rate to the public. The industry “lumps together U.S. and foreign taxes. It includes taxes that are deferred and thus not paid yet. U.S. companies must pay taxes on profits earned abroad, but they can defer these taxes until they bring the cash into the country.” The big five use this tactic of hoarding cash oversees in tax havens, cutting their tax rates drastically. Exxon uses at least 20 tax shelters. These tax loopholes permit Exxon to pay a rate in-line with Mitt Romney, who’s also notorious for tax dodging. Exxon Mobil’s Tax Rate Drops To 13 Percent, After Making 35 Percent More Profits On Rising Gas Prices In 2011Sure, it's thinkprogress, but the fact remains that Big Oil likes to do some tricky things with how it describes its taxation. Here's the Reuter's article it links to as well. Show nested quote +
BIG OIL EARNS BIG
Four of the five biggest oil companies ranked among the top 10 most profitable companies in 2011, according to Fortune, with collective profits of about $80 billion. BP Plc, beset by costs from the Gulf oil spill, had losses, bringing down the average.
The biggest oil companies' tax rates are relatively high when the foreign taxes that they pay are included. On a U.S.-only basis, their rates vary.
There are many ways to calculate how much a company actually pays in U.S. taxes. One roadblock to making independent tax rate estimates is that tax filings are confidential, and filings with securities regulators use a different accounting method.
"Most of what they are putting on their financial statements doesn't really tie to what they are putting into their tax returns," said George Yin, a former chief of staff at the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation.
When calculating the headline tax rates it displays to the public, the industry lumps together U.S. and foreign taxes. It includes taxes that are deferred and thus not paid yet. U.S. companies must pay taxes on profits earned abroad, but they can defer these taxes until they bring the cash into the country.
That is the method behind the American Petroleum Institute's 41 percent estimate for the industry as a whole.
Citizens for Tax Justice considers U.S. profits and U.S. taxes paid only. By that measure, Exxon Mobil paid 13 percent of its U.S. income in taxes after deductions and benefits in 2011, according to a Reuters calculation of securities filings.
Chevron paid about 19 percent by that method, near CTJ's average for all industries.
It is a far cry from the 35 percent top corporate tax rate.
Still, the three-year average for telecom companies is 8 percent; for information technology services companies, it is 2.5 percent, according to CTJ.
"A lot of the techniques that multinationals use to reduce taxes are simply not available to big energy companies," said Howard Gleckman, a fellow at the Tax Policy Center, a centrist think tank.
BIG OIL LACKS IP EDGE
One way big technology and drug companies cut U.S. taxes is by shifting intellectual property income to lower-tax countries. Oil and gas companies, in general, don't benefit from that.
Bob McIntyre, president of Citizens for Tax Justice, said the fact that oil companies still drill in high-tax countries like Saudi Arabia proves they will keep drilling if their U.S. taxes go up. "Their foreign tax rates are very high, and they don't leave Saudi Arabia," McIntyre said.
One major tax break for energy companies is a nearly century-old benefit letting them deduct "intangible drilling costs" (IDC) immediately rather than over time.
Most of the IDC is for the labor costs of drilling a well.
Legislation drafted by Democratic Senator Robert Menendez would limit this break, among others. Ending it completely would raise $14 billion over a decade, according to the White House.
Energy companies liken this benefit to the research and development tax break employed by companies like Apple Inc.
"All the labor (that) tech companies spend on research and development, everything that Apple spends designing the next new product, they recover," said Brian Johnson, a tax expert at the American Petroleum Institute. "Cost recovery is cost recovery."
Not exactly. Many tax experts across the political spectrum said the IDC is a clear exception made for oil. As a rule, expenses that produce income in the future are not immediately deductible.
Analysis: Gas price spike revives fight over energy taxes
Yeah but that's stupid. Exxon doesn't owe US taxes for operations overseas unless it brings the money home. And that's fine. While overseas it isn't using US government resources, so why should anyone mind that it's not paying US taxes?
Realistically if you demanded that Exxon pay those taxes you would never get them anyways. They just wouldn't do business overseas. You really expect them to pay Canada's corporate tax rate and the US's? There wouldn't be much money left!
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That isn't the point of those articles, the point is that the 40% number is derived from both foreign and US taxes and is very misleading. As the study says, they calculate that Exxon only pays 13% on American activities and incomes when taken singularly.
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I don't think the article is asking why Exxon isn't paying the U.S. taxes for their foreign operations. I think it is just saying that Exxon calculates their "41%" rate (or whatever) by lumping in the higher tax percentages of some of their foreign operations to bring up the average. Their U.S rate is 13%, and is based on their U.S. earnings alone.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://s11.postimg.org/genyoqcab/osha.png)
