Thursday, August 11, 2011
"ExxonMobil’s earnings: The real story you won’t hear in Washington"
Oil companies are constantly beat up and accused of not paying enough taxes...
Ken Cohen gives the other side of the story at ExxonMobilPerspectives.com:
"Over the last week as earnings season has approached, the Democratic Party leadership again talked about removing what they call $4 billion in oil industry subsidies. But what they really mean is that they want to increase our taxes by taking away long-standing deductions for our industry while leaving these same deductions in place for other sectors of the economy. The simple truth is that these are legitimate tax provisions to keep U.S. industry internationally competitive – to keep jobs from being exported to other countries.
Unfortunately, this false discussion about oil industry subsidies also reinforces another falsehood making the rounds: that ExxonMobil doesn’t pay its fair share of income taxes in the United States.
Let me state it unequivocally. Last year, our total taxes and duties to the U.S. government were $9.8 billion, which includes an income tax expense of $1.6 billion. Over the past five years, we incurred a total U.S. tax expense of almost $59 billion, which is $18 billion more than we earned in the United States during the same period."
