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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: 8bits who wrote (72341)	6/15/2008 10:25:48 PM
From: Bridge Player	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542088

Exxon's net cash and short term investments (after subtracting debt) is about the same as Microsoft's note also how much Msfot has to pay in taxes: finance.google.com A much smaller percentage than your average oil company. Taxes are paid on earnings, not net cash or short term investments. In the year ended 6/30/2007, Microsoft had 51B in revenues, and paid taxes of around 6B, or approximately 11.8%. In the year ended 12/31/2007, Exxon had 404B in revenues, and paid taxes of around 29B, or approximately 7.2%. These aren't apples to apples comparisons, because they are of course totally different industries with scores of different accounting rules relative to every aspect of their finances. Nevertheless, I don't think it is quite accurate to say that MSFT pays a much smaller percentage than your average oil company. Haven't really looked at tax rates of other oil majors.

To: 8bits who wrote (72341)	6/15/2008 11:12:17 PM
From: Cogito	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 542088

>>12.7 billion dollars in "deferred income taxes". ... So that would mean that when you say they "turned over 46%" of their profits, that might not be exactly so. No, Deferred income taxes are a liability, they will eventually be paid.<< 8bits - I didn't say they would never have to be paid. But if they are deferred, then they haven't been "turned over", have they? Instead, these companies are able to use that money for their own purposes. The IRS doesn't allow me to make that choice, I notice. I agree that Congress has hatched some hare-brained schemes with respect to oil prices. Suing OPEC, as I said when that story broke, is a really stupid idea. Bush, of course, beat Congress to the idea of just begging OPEC to step up production. Still, while there are a lot of areas in the US that are not available for oil drilling, there are other areas that are available. I'd like to see the oil companies stop whining about the closed areas, and start exploiting the open ones, if they're so hard up for supplies. - Allen