How much do oil companies really pay in taxes?
Taxes Thursday, May 12th, 2011
By Steven Mufson, Washingtonpost.com
Just how much do big oil companies pay in taxes?
Exxon Mobil says it pays plenty — more in U.S. taxes than it earned in the United States last year.
Not so, say critics of the oil industry; the Center for American Progress says the oil giant’s effective federal income tax rate is about half the 35 percent standard for U.S. companies. The liberal-leaning think tank, citing Exxon Mobil’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, says the corporation didn’t pay any federal income tax in 2009.
It all depends on how you count.
Exxon Mobil counts everything — not just federal income taxes, but also local property taxes, state taxes, gasoline taxes and payroll taxes. The Center for American Progress (CAP) and other analysts count only the company’s federal corporate income taxes.
“We pay our fair share of taxes,” said Kenneth Cohen, Exxon Mobil’s vice president for public affairs, who in a conference call recently lumped more than $6 of sales, state and local taxes together with every $1 of federal income tax paid in 2010.
But Exxon Mobil’s tax rate is “lower than the average American’s,” Daniel Weiss, an energy expert at CAP, countered in an analysis that put the company’s U.S. federal income tax rate in 2010 at just 17.2 percent.
The tax debate may turn into the most combustible issue when top executives from five oil giants appear before a congressional committee on Thursday.
To read more, visit: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/how-much-do-oil-companies-really-pay-in-taxes/2011/05/11/AF7UNutG_story.html?hpid=z2
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