Since its emergence as a unified company, ExxonMobil has paid governments around the world more than $1 trillion. That’s more than double its net cash flow over the same period and almost three times its profits of $352 billion.
Posted on 08/10/2012 6:54:50 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
It’s earnings season and America’s major energy companies once again face a barrage of criticism over their profits, coupled with suggestions they don’t pay enough in taxes. For example, our friends at the Center for American Progress cry, “Big 5 Oil Companies Going for the Gold; Second-Quarter Earnings Race Ahead, Boosted by Tax Breaks.” CAP advocates increasing taxes on large energy companies.
In a recent book, New America Foundation’s Steve Coll suggests there’s something almost unpatriotic with the profits earned by America’s energy companies. For example, in the last sentence of his book he contrasts the fortunes of the energy giant ExxonMobil with that of the United States.
“From the day of the Mobil merger closing [in 1999] until the day of the S&P downgrade [of U.S. debt], the net cash flow of the United States—receipts minus expenditures—was approximately negative $5.7 trillion. ExxonMobil’s net cash flow from operations and asset sales during the same period was a positive $493 billion.”
Now, perhaps it’s an interesting intellectual exercise to compare receipts and expenditures of a government with that of a private enterprise. But additional data overlooked by Coll, CAP, and other critics of America’s energy majors can help round out the picture a bit.
Economist Mark Perry has developed something of a cottage industry examining how much individual firms and industries pay in taxes anytime someone in the White House or on Capitol Hill insists a company or industry pay “its fair share.” I asked him if he could determine ExxonMobil’s tax bill over the period of time Coll discusses. Perry sent me the following:
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
“Businesses do not pay taxes, consumers pay all of the taxes.” President Ronald Reagan.
I have had discussions with liberals about this fact, and they just don’t get it.
They say that businesses shouldn’t be allowed to pass along taxes in the form of higher prices. One person told me that they should pay taxes out of their excessive profits, not out of what their customers pay them.
Such comments indicate that some people simply have no clue about capitalism or how businesses work.
Speaking of Reagan and movie actors and such — sometimes liberals denigrate Reagan, saying he was a simpleton, not educated, and was simply a movie actor.
But, these same people accept as gospel truth when some Hollywood idiot wants to ban plastic bags or push global warming or push homosexual marriage. In such cases, Hollywood idiots are some sort of visionaries.
But Reagan’s Hollywood background somehow makes him lower than low in the eyes of liberals. Go figure.
They say that businesses shouldn’t be allowed to pass along taxes in the form of higher prices. One person told me that they should pay taxes out of their excessive profits, not out of what their customers pay them.
Wait.. what??? I think it’s time you do what many of us have done. Write liberals off. There is NO logic to them. And thus, as proven by the above comment, no logic in their arguments. I have done it to family members that are flaming liberals. I still see them from time to time but *never* talk politics. Liberal friends? I have none.
I feel dumber for just reading that idiots comment.
Endusers (I’m lookin’ at you Bub) pay all corporate taxes and individual taxes of the shareholders. There are no exceptions.
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