As a point of reference, the chaepest gas within 100 miles of my home (barring a ferry ride) is 90.4 cents (CDN) per LITRE!
That works out to just shy of USD$3 per USG, using .82 for a Cdn $.
Cry me a river, FRiend
Posted on 02/03/2007 1:08:19 PM PST by conservative in nyc
High gas prices and strong oil company earnings have generated a rash of new tax proposals in recent months. Some lawmakers have called for new “windfall profits” taxes—similar to the one signed into federal law in 1980 by President Jimmy Carter—that would tax the profits of major oil companies at a rate of 50 percent. Meanwhile, many commentators have voiced support for the idea of increasing gas taxes to keep the price of gasoline at post-Katrina highs, thereby reducing gas consumption.
However, often ignored in this debate is the fact that oil industry profits are highly cyclical, making them just as prone to “busts” as to “booms.” Additionally, tax collections on the production and import of gasoline by state and federal governments are already near historic highs. In fact, in recent decades governments have collected far more revenue from gasoline taxes than the largest U.S. oil companies have collectively earned in domestic profits. (Click here for previous analysis of state, local and federal gas taxes.)
According to data compiled by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration, the domestic profits of the 25 largest oil companies in the U.S. have been highly volatile since the late 1970s.
As illustrated in Figure 1, between 1977 and 1985, the oil industry recorded relatively high profits—averaging nearly $33 billion per year, after adjusting for inflation. These good times were followed by ten years of relatively flat profits, averaging just $12.3 billion per year. In 1996, profits began to rise again but have been anything but stable, ranging from $9 billion to nearly $42 billion per year. Between 1977 and 2004, the industry’s domestic profits totaled $643 billion, after adjusting for inflation.
In contrast, federal and state taxes on gasoline production and imports have been climbing steadily since the late 1970s and now total roughly $58.4 billion. Due in part to substantial hikes in the federal gasoline excise tax in 1983, 1990, and 1993, annual tax revenues have continued to grow. Since 1977, governments collected more than $1.34 trillion, after adjusting for inflation, in gasoline tax revenues—more than twice the amount of domestic profits earned by major U.S. oil companies during the same period.
As illustrated in Table 1, since 1977, there have been only three years (1980, 1981, and 1982) in which domestic oil industry profits exceeded government gas tax collections. In the remaining years, gasoline tax collections consistently exceeded oil industry profits, reaching a peak in 1995 when gas tax collections outpaced industry profits by a factor of 7.3.
For socialism and communism to be implemented, "progressives" must have a downtrodden and dirt poor underclass whom they will purport to rescue. Capitalism is evil in their eyes because, almost without trying, it thwarts poverty for ANYONE who is willing to have a go at it. The only way to create more poverty is to heavily tax faceless entities like corporations which, of course, pass their losses to consumers to survive, or the "progressives" can just "nationalize" the industries themselves and directly enslave consumers.
The commies know full well what they are doing.
ping for later
bttt
If you add in the roughly 120 billion of taxes on the oil companies that becomes another 480 dollars per man woman and child for a total of about 750 bucks each. No company pays taxes. It is merely a cost of doing business and is passed on to the consumer. If the 9% profit the oil companies make is obscene, the government taxing authorities must be obscene x 5. Exxon is not screwing us, it is the government taxing authorities that are.
Carter did this in his administration and the program has yet to produce one damn gallon of gas and sell it to the market. We are talking billions of dollars of tax money for the Energy Department.
Hillary wants more so caught up.
It is listed on the gas pumps here, but it's not prominent, and kind of abstract, since NY also charges sales tax on top of other gasoline excise taxes. What we really need is for receipts and/or the pumps themselves to show how much of the total bill is taxes. But that would cost gas station owners money, and probably isn't a good idea for that reason.
*I* own the mineral rights to a bit of land. Are you telling me that by SELLING what I OWN, I am guilty of imposing a TAX?
Ignorant idiot.
Mineral rights fees sold by the BLM and states, and local entities.
and they even charge the fees on "dry holes"
And methinks thou doth protest too much - something you're not coming clean with here?
As a point of reference, the chaepest gas within 100 miles of my home (barring a ferry ride) is 90.4 cents (CDN) per LITRE!
That works out to just shy of USD$3 per USG, using .82 for a Cdn $.
Cry me a river, FRiend
Hereditary mineral rights, FRiend. I may have been a bit harsh. I've got a bee in my bonnet of late, and I've been trying to behave.....
A little math education is warranted.
If YOU work 40 hours a week and make a profit of $50,000 in a year, then the following year YOU work 10% more, should you not make 10% more profit.
Another example would be that YOU're a farmer, YOU sell 100 ears of corn for a profit of $10. The next week YOU sell 200 ears of corn for a profit of $20.
Was it wrong for YOU to make a larger profit the second week than the first?
Next math lesson:
YOU start YOUR own business making widgets. Labor costs YOU $25,000, material costs YOU $25,000, Marketing costs YOU $25,000, and production costs YOU $25,000. It costs YOU $100,000 to produce widgets, which you made a profit of 10%, or $10,000.
The following year YOUR workers threaten that if they don't get a cost of living raise, they'll strike, and YOU'll lose your business. So now labor costs you $30,000. Also, China has been expanding, using more and more of Imaginum, the prime material used in making widgets. Material costs are $30,000. Production and Marketing both rise to $30,000 each. And once again YOU've made 10% profit. But last year you made $10,000 and this year you made $12,000.
Now a more in depth math lesson:
Lets combine lesson 1 and 2.
In YOUR 3rd year of business YOUR labor, material, production , and marketing costs all double. But so does YOUR production and sales.
This year YOUR profit it is once again 10%, but your dollar amount is $24,000. Twice what YOU had last year.
Boy are you evil. Wait till Hillary and Nancy get a hold of YOU.
Now to bring that into todays world of oil. If crude oil prices rise from $45 a barrel to $75 a barrel, a 66% increase, shouldn't the oil companies, if they keep the same profit margin, also make 66% more?
Also if consumers use twice as much gas as they did 10 years ago, and crude production costs stay the same, and profit margins stay the same, shouldn't the profits be twice as much?
Oil prices go up and down. As do gas prices. As do profits. But volume keeps going up. And as production goes up so do profits. So to say that profits were flat, when production increased, is really saying alot.
One last thing:
Imagine $12.3 billion in profit in year one. Re-invest that and get a return of 10%. That means year 2 should be $13.5 billion.
Do that again. And year 3 should be $14.8 billion.
Do that again. And year 4 should be $16.2 billion.
Do that again. And year 5 should be $17.8 billion.
One last thing. I used 10% as the magic profit ratio because that is roughly what the oil companies profits are.
10% is also a quite common number in manufacturing and also retail sales profits.
| DOW30 | Oper Margin | Profit Margin |
| MSFT | 37.20 | 28.45 |
| INTC | 31.46 | 22.31 |
| KO | 26.13 | 21.09 |
| MRK | 27.51 | 21.04 |
| JNJ | 26.47 | 20.61 |
| C | 24.46 | 20.44 |
| PFE | 29.90 | 15.76 |
| AXP | 18.68 | 15.39 |
| MO | 25.14 | 15.14 |
| MMM | 23.66 | 15.11 |
| PG | 19.42 | 12.73 |
| MCD | 19.52 | 12.72 |
| GE | 15.07 | 11.05 |
| XOM | 14.93 | 11.01 |
| T | 14.06 | 10.91 |
| JPM | 19.40 | 10.62 |
| VZ | 19.02 | 9.85 |
| AIG | 20.82 | 9.62 |
| IBM | 10.29 | 8.71 |
| DIS | 12.86 | 7.93 |
| CAT | 10.41 | 7.85 |
| DD | 8.07 | 7.71 |
| UTX | 12.13 | 7.18 |
| HD | 11.49 | 7.16 |
| HON | 8.97 | 5.98 |
| AA | 8.15 | 4.71 |
| BA | 4.02 | 4.69 |
| WMT | 4.90 | 3.59 |
| HPQ | 5.72 | 2.77 |
| GM | -7.30 | -5.49 |
|
Exxon's profit margin was 14th out of the 30 Dow components - middle of the pack. They just had more revenue. Note that the other company every liberal hates, Wal*Mart, has very slim operating margins - typical of the retail business. |
I was commenting on the choice of adjectives for a 12.3 billion profit.
what's your point amd what does it have to do with that ?
Your comment was "too funny...12.3 billion = flat profits ". I assumed that your comment about flat profits at being $12.3 were sarcastic. That $12.3 billion was too much, and undeserved.
I was trying to make the point that when someone gets into business, first and foremost, profit must be made. If a consistant profit ratio is maintained, and business level remains constant or grows, bottom line profit will naturally go up.
In the case of oil, if profit growth was flat, while production was increasing, it shows that something negative was going on.
But the libs would only see the bottom line number, and not take into account other factors in the equation. And still make big oil an evil boogie man.
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