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

To: 8bits who wrote (72411)	6/16/2008 3:49:52 AM
From: Cogito	Respond to of 542129

>>Cogito asserted that oil companies get tax breaks, my rebuttal was that may be true but their tax rates (on earnings which is what we should compare, not revenues..) are higher than many other companies including companies like Cisco, Miscrosoft, etc. << 8bits - I think there's a disconnect here. Oil companies are not subject to higher corporate income tax rates than other companies as far as I know. So if they are paying a higher percentage of their earnings in taxes, my guess is that there are other kinds of taxes involved. Too tired right now to investigate. I do know that Congress passed a bill a couple of years ago giving US oil companies 18 billion in tax breaks. And by the way, I pointed out the huge mountain of cash that Exxon has, and the fact that their pile of cash has been growing steadily, as a way to demonstrate that they are doing very, very well as a company. That makes it unseemly to me for people to go around saying that these companies are being saddled with unfair burdens by Congress. - Allen

To: 8bits who wrote (72411)	6/16/2008 12:08:55 PM
From: Bridge Player	Respond to of 542129

Here is another piece on Exxon taxes that supports your point and perhaps makes it even clearer. ============================================================ Exxon's 2007 Tax Bill: $30 Billion Corporate profits receive a lot of media attention, but what receives considerably less attention are the corporate taxes paid on corporate profits. Do a Google search for "Exxon profits" and you'll get about 8,000 hits. Now try "Exxon taxes" and you'll get a little more than 300 hits. That's a ratio of about 33 to 1. I'm pretty sure that Exxon's tax payment in 2007 of $30 billion (that's $30,000,000,000) is a record, exceeding the $28 billion it paid last year. By the way, Exxon pays taxes at a rate of 41% on its taxable income! [Update: The $40.6 billion and $39.5 billion figures are after-tax profits. For 2006, Exxon's EBT (earnings before tax) was $67.4 billion, it paid $27.9 billion in taxes (41.4% tax rate), and its NIAT (net income after tax), or profit, was $39.5 billion.] Over the last three years, Exxon Mobil has paid an average of $27 billion annually in taxes. That's $27,000,000,000 per year, a number so large it's hard to comprehend. Here's one way to put Exxon's taxes into perspective. According to IRS data for 2004, the most recent year available: Total number of tax returns: 130 million Number of Tax Returns for the Bottom 50%: 65 million Adjusted Gross Income for the Bottom 50%: $922 billion Total Income Tax Paid by the Bottom 50%: $27.4 billion Conclusion: In other words, just one corporation (Exxon Mobil) pays as much in taxes ($27 billion) annually as the entire bottom 50% of individual taxpayers, which is 65,000,000 people! Further, the tax rate for the bottom 50% is only 3% of adjusted gross income ($27.4 billion / $922 billion), and the tax rate for Exxon was 41% in 2006 ($67.4 billion in taxable income, $27.9 billion in taxes seekingalpha.com