“Please help me to understand something about that graph. How is that Exxon paid more in taxes than they made in profits?”
Those are probably after-tax profits. Oil companies (just like you) pay many taxes that are not taxes on income. You may be in the 36% tax bracket for Federal taxes, but if you add up all the taxes you pay (property, sales, gasoline, mass transit, environmental, state, capital gains etc.), you may be paying over 50% of your income in taxes.
If you look at your household as a business, your costs of living, eating, shelter, transportation, insurance and so on are not profit. Profit is what’s left over after all expenses. So, you pay taxes, and yet often have less money at the end of a year. You made no profit, you took a loss for the year, and you also paid taxes.
Exactly, taxes take close to 50% of my income and I hear people bitching about the price of anything by comparison. Let cable rate rise by $2/month and listen to the fools screaming. Taxes take more of my income, by far, then any other item—in fact, taxes take more of my income than all other expenses combined. But, the HO says, we must all be good serfs and pay whatever he says we pay lest we are met with the point of his guns.