In 2006, when I wrote this, and culled directly from their 10K, ExxonMobil paid $30.7 billion in excise taxes, $41.6 billion in other "taxes and duties", and $59.4 billion in income taxes… or, in other words, $131 billion in taxes on $359 billion in Revenue and $36 billion in Net Income.
Thus, taxes were 364% of Net Income and 36.5% of Revenue, while Net Income was 10% of Revenue. In other words, taxing entities of all sorts made $3.65 per every $1.00 of profit booked by ExxonMobil shareholders.
Isn't this a 78.5% effective overall tax rate?
It wasn't just ExxonMobil. All large oil companies pay this level of tax burden. When Obama talks about the horribly unfair tax benefits enjoyed by Big Oil, he forgets to mention the myriad of other special tax burdens placed solely upon that industry.
Imagine a foot race, where you make one of the runners wear 50 lb weights, tie his hands together, wear horse hair underwear and superglue his thighs. Then you feel bad, and tell him he can wear he can eat an extra helping at breakfast because he is so burdened otherwise. Then say, Nahhh, that wouldn't be fair to the other runners that only get one serving. But…but… what about my weights, thighs, hands and scratchy gonads, God Damn it? No one else gets those!
I guess a "Windfall Profit" is ANY profit left after the greedy tax pigs so forcefully shoulder their way to the very front of the line to stick their wet snouts, quivering with greedy anticipation, so deeply into the trough of warm, savory largesse provided by private enterprise. As the Beatles wrote… "Its one for you 19 for me... 'cause I'm the taxman... oh yeah, I'm the taxman".
By. Allen Gilmer
Allen writes the popular energy news blog Open Choke More
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