The Daily Szep: GOP Blocks Tax on Excessive Oil Profits

Comments

[not one of the sheep]

GOOD! How about some good old common sense exploration and self reliance on oil instead of foreign dependence. The best solution congress can come up with is TAX. Sit down, Shut up, and get down to finding solutions instead of the same old stupid rheoric. Peloser has proven herself to be the biggest joke the Senate has ever seen.

[vippy]

Who makes the rules - congress does. They created the Enron Loophole and therefore the future's market. They will blame anything and everything but point the finger at themselves!
What a bunch of useless people. We should really be angry. They were briefed on Dec 14,07
on this very subject and decided to ignore it. And people blame it on the dollar value, China,
everything but. The recent energy bill that was passed, get this, calls for 35mpgs by the Year 2020.
Is that insane or what. Congress has bankrupted the American Car Industry by imposing stupid
laws. Why can oil well owners in TX and OK only pump 500 gal a month? Nothing makes any
sense - but then it does, they get richer while the country approaches a 3rd world status.

[LCRover001]

Just think how much research could have been funded from those taxes.

It takes money to fund research and it takes research to find solutions.

Exploration is not the way, oil independence is.

What appalls me is not that the oil companies are making so much money, it is that they say they would make that much regardless what a gallon of gas cost. If that is so then why not lower the cost of gas to avoid taxation, to relieve the burden on the American public and to help the economy. If gas prices have nothing to do with profit then why does the cost of gas jump 10 cents every time someone farts in the Middle East?

What burns me up is not that we want to tax them but that we gave them a tax break.

If all of the tax money from this tax was to go toward finding alternative fuel sources then it was one of the best ideas to come out of D.C. in almost 8 years.

Change takes money and with all the tax cuts and the Iraq war for profit there is very little left to bring that change about.

[Aaror]

Well, the real question is "Should congress stop giving oil huge tax breaks?" But if you prefer paying higher taxes to make sure that the oil companies profits stay high, I guess that is your opinion. Seems weird that you want to pay higher taxes to lower their taxes, but hey...
BTW, this is based on the "zero sum game," theory of government, where all moneys spent by the government are eventually paid by taxes, and all taxes are paid by someone. If you have a magical way of changing either of these assumptions, please let me know.

[Pquilson]

"all moneys spent by the government are eventually paid by taxes, and all taxes are paid by someone."
Wrong. All moneys spent by the government are previously, or immediately paid by taxes. I agree that all taxes are paid by someone. In the case of corporate taxes, those taxes are paid by the customers of those corporations. That is why it makes no sense to impose "windfall profits" taxes on oil companies. Not if you wish to reduce the price of gasoline, anyway. Those additional taxes will be added to the cost of doing business by the corporations and therefore to the price of goods sold.
Of course, the Federal and State excise and sales taxes will still be present in the cost of said products, and they, of course, have exactly nothing to do with the production and delivery of said goods.