Several thoughts on the windfall profits tax..........
1) Per "Hot Air":
However, one aspect of low oil prices has not received much attention. Barack Obama plans to spend hundreds of billions of dollars if elected President on a wide range of government initiatives. He claims to have the resources to spend that money responsibly, in part by imposing windfall-profits taxes on Big Oil:
* Enact a Windfall Profits Tax to Provide a $1,000 Emergency Energy Rebate to American Families:Barack Obama and Joe Biden will enact a windfall profits tax on excessive oil company profits to give American families an immediate $1,000 emergency energy rebate to help families pay rising bills. This relief would be a down payment on the Obama-Biden long-term plan to provide middle-class families with at least $1,000 per year in permanent tax relief.
That option seems off the table now. The “windfall profits” tax — always a bit of a misnomer, since the average margin for American oil companies has been around a modest 8% — can’t get applied when the supposed windfall disappears. Obama can’t redistribute wealth that doesn’t exist.
hotair.com
2) Per Ben Stein:
How to Ruin the U.S. Economy
by Ben Stein
Have an energy policy that disallows producing our own energy and instead requires that we buy energy from abroad, thus making our oil prices highly volatile and creating large balance of payments deficits, lowering the value of the dollar and thus making the problem get progressively worse.
Propose to save the situation by surtaxing the oil industry, which is owned by our fellow Americans, mostly in their retirement plans, thus penalizing Americans for investing in companies that efficiently and legally produce an indispensable product.
Then have the Republican candidate say he would keep on the job the Treasury Secretary who facilitated the crisis, failed to protect the nation from the crisis, got the taxpayers to pony up to save his Wall Street buddies, and have the Democratic candidate, as noted, say he would save the day by taxing the stockholders of energy companies.
finance.yahoo.com |
