$21 Billion in tax "breaks" over 10 years = $2.1 billion per year = 0.15% of this year's estimated DEFICIT and 0.058% of the current fiscal year's BUDGET. IOW: a drop in the bucket. And even that assumes:
A. the additional tax revenue actually materializes (as though oil companies would not change their behavior and accounting decisions in response to a change in tax preferences) and
B. The money isn't simply spent by Congress, which given their history is a real knee-slapper..
The first thing you should know about these oil-company loopholes is that the main items under discussion are not exactly oil-company loopholes. In 2004, Congress enacted an ill-considered tax break for manufacturing companies — one of many harebrained efforts to improve the U.S. economy by empowering politicians to hand out favors to their friends — and the definition of manufacturer was written in such a way as to cover just about any firm with investments in physical capital: Starbucks qualifies for manufacturers’ benefits under the relevant section of the law, known as Section 199. If you hire a guy to build a diving board for your home swimming pool, he’s as much a manufacturer as General Motors.
Which is to say, it is a stupid law, but it is not a law that grants special privileges to oil companies. Congress would be wise to repeal Section 199 in its entirety. In truth, our corporate tax code is a Hieronymus Bosch nightmare of political favoritism, market distortion, and rent-seeking representing the worst aspects of the unsavory nexus between Big Business and Big Government. For that matter, so is the individual tax code, and both should be reformed in roughly the same way: by eliminating exemptions, deductions, and hamfisted attempts at imposing economic policy through the tax regime. Such an approach to reform would, intelligently applied, enable us to reduce tax rates without reducing tax revenue, a very happy result indeed for a great many taxpayers.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/267021/oil-drill-editors