EXXON MOBIL CORPORATION
FIRST QUARTER 2006
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(millions of dollars, unless noted)
First Quarter
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2006 2005
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Earnings / Earnings Per Share
Total revenues and other income(1) 88,980 82,051
Total costs and other deductions(1) 73,521 69,148
Income before income taxes 15,459 12,903
Income taxes 7,059 5,043
Net income (U.S. GAAP) 8,400 7,860
Net income per common share (dollars) 1.38 1.23
Net income per common share
- assuming dilution (dollars) 1.37 1.22
Other Financial Data
Dividends on common stock
Total 1,957 1,728
Per common share (dollars) 0.32 0.27
Millions of common shares outstanding
At March 31 6,050 6,366
Average - assuming dilution 6,126 6,421
Shareholders' equity at March 31 112,463 103,698
Capital employed at March 31 122,286 114,171
Income taxes 7,059 5,043
Excise taxes 7,664 7,238
All other taxes 11,049 10,944
Total taxes 25,772 23,225
ExxonMobil's share of income taxes
of equity companies 521 493
They REMIT taxes.
Try to get it through your head that the person writing the check is not always the person PAYING. In economic terms, the entity that feels the burden is the one that pays.
It’s like saying you “paid” for a hotel while you were travelling for your company. If your company reimburses you for that expense, then you didn’t really “pay” for it in any real economic sense.
A business “pays” taxes in that sense, but then they turn around and get reimbursed by higher prices charged to customers. So in the end, they didn’t really “pay” the taxes.
Think of it this way: If all taxes on business were removed, and they lowered their prices by that same amount, would their profits change ? No, they would not. This clearly demonstrates that they just used higher prices to pay their taxes, using the customer’s money and not their own.
The terrible trap here is that as long as all business competitors incur the same tax costs, THEY DON’T CARE how high taxes get, because they can ALWAYS pass it along to the customer. Since all their competitors face the same increase in costs, they don’t need to fear losing customers through higher prices. As long as the customer NEEDS the product, it is the customer that will get screwed through the higher tax cost SUPPOSEDLY paid by the business. The only thing that has kept government from using this as a vehicle for unlimited government is that there are other governments involved and if they squeeze too hard, they will kill off the local businesses that they can force to pay the taxes. The entire market will be supplied from other businesses they don’t have authority to use force on, and their tax increase will lose them revenue instead of increasing tax revenue.
But I can at least thank you for not posting another link to that same article again.
No one on this thread is suggesting that there is no such thing as corporate income tax.
You offered the article to refute Bigun's post in #45 where he said:
"Well, no! Actually they collected those funds from any combination of their shareholders, their customers, or their employees and forwarded them to the government."
But the article does not refute Bigun's assertion, it validates it with the following:
The magnitude of these tax payments made by US corporations raises the question of tax incidence. In other words, who bears the burden of taxes on the domestic oil industry? Every dollar a corporation spends, whether on taxes or anything else, eventually comes out of the pockets of individuals, specifically three groups of individuals: the corporation’s shareholders, in the form of decreased capital gains and dividends; its workers, in the form of lower wages; or its customers, in the form of higher prices.
I think Kellis best summed up the issue being discussed with the following: "All taxes on business are simply a fiction to hide the total tax burden from the consumer."
Do you not agree that reduction of corporate taxes would benefit our economy by making our companies more profitable and/or more competitive?