Posted on 02/12/2009 8:16:42 AM PST by thackney
Last week, as a friend of mine and I were discussing the energy business, an acquaintance of ours came into the room. When told the topic of discussion, she immediately denounced Exxon Mobil. She'd just heard on the radio that the energy giant had had a record $45.2 billion profit in 2008. She was clearly hoping that we would join in her disgust.
I asked, "So are you suggesting that Exxon should not make money?" I went on, "Would you prefer that Exxon be like AIG, or Citigroup, or one of the big Wall Street outfits that's now asking for a government bailout?" That quieted her down. But I couldn't help myself. I asked, "Did you know that 52 percent of Exxon is owned by mutual funds, index funds, and pension funds?" No. Nor did she know that about 2 million individuals own Exxon stock or that company insiders hold less than 1 percent of the company.
The facts above are not meant to belittle my acquaintance. Rather, it's to illustrate an all-too-common problem in America: Voters have been conditioned to hate the energy business in general and Big Oil in particular. Americans love their gasoline, they love their cars, but they hate the oil companies....
According to the company's income statement, the amount of taxes it paid in 2008 was 2.5 times as much as its net profit. The $45.2 billion profit figure makes a snappy headline, but the $116.2 billion in taxes that it paid is relegated to a footnote—if that. Exxon's tax bill breaks down like this: income taxes, $36.5 billion; sales-based taxes, $34.5 billion; "all other" taxes, $45.2 billion. ...
(Excerpt) Read more at usnews.com ...
I remember Hillary wanted to take their profits and invest it in some clean green energy scam. I guess Obama wants to do the same.
After Porkulus passes, maybe Obama will then go after a politically popular target such as oil companies, and tax the heck out of them. In the minds of the enviro liberal folks, we don’t need oil companies anyway, because our future is all in solar energy and windmills.
Maybe the oil companies should stop selling products for about a month or two —— possibly the attitude of the socialists in Washington would shift a bit and lose some arrogance and operating impunity?
(Dragging them behind a motorcycle over a field of frozen corn stubble comes to mind)
Really? If they didn’t pay high taxes their profits would be “evil”?
ExxonMobile taxes will cover almost 15% of the welfare and pork bill of 2009. Liberals and their non-producer voters should send 116 billion thank you notes to ExxonMobile.
sales-based taxes, $34.5 billion;
Um..... is this not tax that the consumer pays attached to the price per gallon of gas? If so that is deliberately deceptive.
Yes.
If so that is deliberately deceptive.
Why? It is part of the price at the pump that everyone compares and talks about.
please, nothing that harsh
I have a liberal gal pal who simply refuses to hear this information when we chat. Liberals are so narrow minded and limit their information gathering to ONLY their wacked-out sources.
You are right and it is an excellent point. It is like including all the state sales tax collections in the taxes Walmart “paid”.
People have no idea how really taxed the oil companies are.
Um.... ALL taxes that a corporation pays are ultimately paid by consumers in the form of higher prices per unit of good the corporation sells. Of course, Exxon has more business than just retail gasoline sales. So it pays sales taxes on assets that it acquires and consumable goods that it uses. It pays property taxes on its real assets. The bottom line is that all of the taxes that the corporation pays (even though some or all of those taxes are ultimately paid by the consumers) must be accounted for in its financial statements, and Exxon Corporation paid a total of 116.2 billion in taxes. If the 45.2 billion in profit was a record (which it was), I guess the 116.2 Billion in taxes was probably a record too.
It would depend on who is ultimately responsible for the taxes.
Most corporations paying estimated quarterly taxes. If so, then Exxon has to pay the estimated sales tax (I’m assuming, but could be wrong, that Exxon is the conduit for those sales taxes) on a quarterly basis, and since it’s estimated, it isn’t necessarily an accurate reflection of the taxes they collected. And, I know a corporation like Exxon doesn’t dare play fast and loose with estimated taxes. The IRS will kill you for underestimating those taxes.
Wouldn’t it be fair to say, that all Oil companies have to pay the same tax rate? Doesn’t seem fair that one oil company would be singled out.
Want to lower your taxes and maybe get a bailout?
Incorporate.
The Government Accountability Office released a report today indicating that 83 of the 100 largest U.S. corporations — including many that are benefiting from Washington’s many taxpayer-funded bailouts — operate subsidiaries in countries known to be tax havens. Additionally, 63 of the 100 largest publicly-traded federal contractors have similar subsidiaries in the same spots, according to the report.
And that might not be all.
According to the GAO:
[T]he SEC only requires public corporations to report significant subsidiaries, so the number of subsidiaries in jurisdictions listed as tax havens or financial privacy jurisdictions for each corporation or federal contractor may be understated in this report.
Browsing the list of companies, you’ll find many of the same names we’ve heard in recent months connected to federal bailouts. For example, American International Group, which was bailed out last year to the tune of roughly $150 billion, has 18 subsidiaries in eight tax-haven countries, including Bahrain, Switzerland and Bermuda, the GAO found.
Bank of America — which received a $138 billion lifeline today, on top of $15 billion it’s already received under the Wall Street bailout (not to mention $10 billion injected into Merrill Lynch ahead of its acquisition by BoA) — operates 115 subsidiaries in 11 tax-haven countries, including Gibraltar and the Cayman Islands.
The list goes on.
So what does it mean? Well, it appears that these corporations are begging for taxpayers to bail them out for the bad investment decisions they made, while at the same time skirting their tax obligations to the United States. (I say “appears” because the GAO concedes that subsidiaries may be established in listed jurisdictions for a variety of nontax business reasons.” Still, for what other reason would Citigroup care to house operations on Aruba and the Isle of Man?).
Some lawmakers are asking the same question. Sens. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) and Carl Levin (D-Mich.), who requested the GAO report, plan to introduce legislation “to shut down these tax dodgers,” as Dorgan said in a statement:
This report shows that some of our country’s largest companies and federal contractors, many of which are household names, continue to use offshore tax havens to avoid paying their fair share of taxes to the U.S. And, some of those companies have even received emergency economic funds from the government.
The companies, in the past, have argued that the U.S. tax code is over-burdensome, forcing them to operate in tax havens to remain competitive. Levin points out that that’s not always the case:
[N]ot all large U.S. companies are major tax haven users and there is great contrast between competitors. For example, Pepsi has 70 tax haven subsidiaries, while Coca Cola has 8; Morgan Stanley has 273, while Fannie Mae has 0; and Caterpillar has 49, while Deere has 3.
The lawmakers estimate that tax shelters cost the federal Treasury $100 billion each year
But recognize that all oil companies are not equal in their operations.
ExxonMobil actually buys more crude oil than they produce. Their refining throughput is more than twice their crude oil production.
Also most of these companies have varying amount of natural gas operations.
Different upstream versus downstream operations are going to have different taxing requirements.
A company like Anadarko is almost all upstream production, without refining or retail sales.
;~)
They collect it up-front and have to pay it ‘back’ to the gov’t.
So, Exxon and every other business owner is a tax collector for the gov’t.
Failing to pay these sales taxes get many companies in trouble, either through honest mistake or dishonesty.
Difficult to say if there is a better method to send the sales tax directly to the gov’t. It would get rid of just one more burden on business.
Not if they have to collect the tax at the pump, then pay the various confiscators. Employers pay 1/2 of employee FICA and therefore it's a liability (balance sheet) and expense (income statement).
Management's responsibility is to shareholders (which thanks to congress's social engineering, taxpayers are now in that class for financial institutions and auto manufacturers). Corporations have to pay taxes in all of their local jurisdictions (say the USA or France). They can keep the profits local or move it somewhere else to the benefit of that locality.
If they repatriate the profits to the US, they have to give the US government agencies roughly 40% of the profits that were already taxed. Dividends come out of profits. That leaves far less dividends to pay to shareholders, or leaves less shareholder equity to reinvest.
Are they upholding their fiduciary responsibility to shareholders if they consciously dispose of 40% of their profits for no good reason - other then, as Biden put it, "being patriotic"?
I have an idea (it's not original) - cut the corporate taxes on profits made overseas to nothing. That way, the capital comes bact to the US and can be used productively here. Part of something is better then all of nothing.
In the United States at least, corporate charters are instruments of collectivization, granted by the power of the laws of the Republic.
When the exercise of those charters becomes antagonistic towards the purpose of American governance - which is “To Secure These Rights”,(these rights being endowed upon INDIVIDUALS - not upon collectives) then the American thing to do is to REVOKE THE CORPORATE CHARTER.
What the Republic giveth, the Republic can taketh away.
>>REVOKE THE CORPORATE CHARTER
Should be:
REVOKE THE CORPORATE CHARTER of those who abuse it.
IMHO, you've got it backwards. Business are notional individuals and individuals are not here to serve government - it's the other way around. I profoundly disagree with you on this issue. Government is not the boss, and America better wake up right now to this fact or there will be no more America are we know it.
Do you believe the federal government has the right to disolve the equity of the holdings in your 401k/IRA Mutual funds? That is the the biggest source of shareholders in these companies.
I'm not defending the atrocious corporate governance issues we face today, but every single time government steps in to "fix" a problem, their "fix" is always 10 times worse then the problem. The current economic meltdown is a perfect example. Government inflicted. Social insecurity, Medicare/Medicaid - all ponzi schemes.
Please! Someone save me from government always trying to help me!!!
Thackney has been pinged to that post before and won't comment. I have recently rewritten the piece, adding a brief treatise on mercantilism, which is what all of this effectively is. I'll be posting it on my web site.
Regarding the corporatist economics of Mussolini's fascist regime..."In actual fact, it is the State, i.e. the taxpayer, who has become responsible to private enterprise. In Fascist Italy the State pays for the blunders of private enterprise. As long as business was good, profit remained to private initiative. When the depression came, the Government added the loss to the tax-payer's burden. Profit is private and individual. Loss is public and social."--Under the Axe of Fascism, by Gaetano Salvemini, p. 416 (1936).Salvemini goes on to discuss the bailouts, which were targeted to large corporations but not small businesses. All of this sounds familiar to everyone, I'm sure..."In December 1932 a Fascist financial expert, Signor Mazuchelli, estimated that more than 8.5 billion lire had been paid out by the Government from 1923 to 1932 in order to help depressed industries (Rivista Bancaria, December 15th, 1932, p.1,007). From December 1932 to 1935 the outlay must have doubled."--Under the Axe of Fascism, by Gaetano Salvemini (1936).The plays are being taken from various playbooks, but that doesn't make them equal; however, the common thread is authoritarianism/centralization of power.
Render unto Caesar what is his.
They can do whatever they want with it. I plan on working until I die anyways, and my appetites are small and disciplined.
But nice try, though - Extortion is as extortion does.
Tyranny of the appetite.
To: Hostage; SierraWasp; snopercod; Dog Gone; sasquatch
It doesn’t look like that was sent to me.
You are entertaining at least.
I don't see how this is germane to the discussion of Exxon's taxes. If you want to equate a corporation to communism, argue away. I think it's a strawman.
Your original post was railing against companies not paying taxes on overseas profits. If they were breaking the law, the IRS would be all over them. If congress wants to tax the hell out of companies, they'll pack up and go elsewhere like Halliburton did. The gov can boycott these evil profit-seeking entities, but that will have a further deleterious effect on treasury income.
My simple point was - and I'll leave it at that - government is the problem. Government keeps trying to pick winners and losers, engineer society, and they've created a morass of laws and red tape that no human being can comprehend (except maybe Timmy Guietner).
If government would make taxes fair and simple, all responsible people and companies would be more prosperous and happy to comply. This tax system if FUBAR and you get what you design.
>>You are entertaining at least.
My God is not a bunch of 1’s and 0’s in cyberspace.
But you go ahead and worship your 401k/IRA if you want to.
Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Baal
—The Who?
OMG! I thought I saw some really stupid crap on the UFO threads, but Low Man, you take the cake. This is probably the single most stupid comment in the entire history of Free Republic, no, more like the history of the internet, and Lord knows there's some seriously stupid stuff out there.
It is important to understand the mechanics of enviro-racketeering. Just as The Ruckus Society protests of globalism are funded by ultra-globalist Ted Turner (who also launders his money through the Tides Foundation), so too do supporters of American mercantilism fail to recognize the major stockholders of petrochemical production laundering their influence buying through the likes of the NRDC. Environmental control of access to resources has become a "big business" of its own. It is almost impossible to explain their power and cash flow by mere ideology or dispensation.
If you really want to understand the underlying Constitutional mechanics, I have two articles for you:
Kelo and the 14th Amendment: Exploring a Constitutional Koan and Skinning Cats Legal Means to Disarm the Second Amendment. Together, with the piece linked above, you'll have a solid grip on how the great game really works. It will explain a great deal that probably heretofore seemed illogical.
OMG! I thought I saw some really stupid crap on the UFO threads, but Low Man, you take the cake. This is probably the single most stupid comment in the entire history of Free Republic, no, more like the history of the internet, and Lord knows there's some seriously stupid stuff out there.
Yeah, but they all start with "Co"! Don't you GET it?
Jim Robinson's initials are "JR", so that means he'll probably be shot in the last season of his hit TV show!
Weird, man...
In actual fact, it is the State, i.e. the taxpayer, who has become responsible to private enterprise. In Fascist Italy the State pays for the blunders of private enterprise. As long as business was good, profit remained to private initiative. When the depression came, the Government added the loss to the tax-payer's burden. Profit is private and individual. Loss is public and social."--Under the Axe of Fascism, by Gaetano Salvemini, p. 416 (1936)."In December 1932 a Fascist financial expert, Signor Mazuchelli, estimated that more than 8.5 billion lire had been paid out by the Government from 1923 to 1932 in order to help depressed industries (Rivista Bancaria, December 15th, 1932, p.1,007). From December 1932 to 1935 the outlay must have doubled."--Under the Axe of Fascism, by Gaetano Salvemini (1936).
"In actual fact, it is the State, i.e. the taxpayer, who has become responsible to private enterprise. In Fascist Italy the State pays for the blunders of private enterprise. As long as business was good, profit remained to private initiative. When the depression came, the Government added the loss to the tax-payer's burden. Profit is private and individual. Loss is public and social."--Under the Axe of Fascism, by Gaetano Salvemini, p. 416 (1936).
"In December 1932 a Fascist financial expert, Signor Mazuchelli, estimated that more than 8.5 billion lire had been paid out by the Government from 1923 to 1932 in order to help depressed industries (Rivista Bancaria, December 15th, 1932, p.1,007). From December 1932 to 1935 the outlay must have doubled."We'll wait.--Under the Axe of Fascism, by Gaetano Salvemini (1936).
Well Travis and Chris, in between reading about UFOs, why don't you enlighten the class and explain what Mr. Salvemi was talking about in 1936:
He was talking about Fascist Italy.
You claimed "Corporatism=Collectivism=Communism". Would you kindly explain how you get from historical information on Fascist Italy to your conclusion?
(It might be illuminating if you look up the definitions of "Fascism" and "Communism" as a start. Then, figure out whether it was the governments controlling companies or the other way 'round.)
Here's a hint: Corporations don't typically ask for greater government regulation.
Correct. The major stockholders make donations to activist NGOs that do it for them, knowing it will kill their smaller competition. The NGO sues the appropriately complicit agency in Federill Court, and the bureaucrats have a job for life paid for by a non-discretionary "settlement." Then the politicians and bigwigs get to play ", Oh please, Brer Fox, don't throw me in that briar patch over there!!!" Meanwhile, the lesser players who know their time is short get to fight with the regulatory Tar Baby. That way, neither the corporate players nor the activists know what is going on.
It makes great theater.
Could you provide evidence of any corporation asking for greater government regulation? (Negotiating on regulation already on its way from the govt. or already in place doesn't count...)
And even if I were to agree with what you wrote, your statement doesn't support the contention that "Corporatism=Collectivism" since only some corporations behave in that way.
If your general statement of equivalence is to be supported, you must show that a corporation inherently leads to or equals collectivism. A few bad actors in the corporate world don't condemn all the rest.
One feature Fascists and Communists have in common is the mandatory worship of, and subjugation of the individual to, the structure of collective governance.
What do you mean by "collective governance"?
Oh, and there is a very distinct, definitive difference between Fascism and Communism. Do you know what it is? Do you then understand how quotes about Italian Fascism do nothing to support your claim that "Corporatism=Collectivism=Communism"?
Major oil companies lobbied EPA to approve gasoline oxygenated with MTBE and simultaneously demanded (and got) indemnity for consequential environmental damages in the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990.
Major oil companies lobbied EPA to approve gasoline oxygenated with MTBE and simultaneously demanded (and got) indemnity for consequential environmental damages in the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990.
Unclear on the meaning of the word "evidence"?
No, short of time for people who don't go read the prior post on which the evidence, including court documents, is already posted.
Hey, CO, you're the one who injected yourself into my discussion with LomanBill. Now you think I should review all your other posts too?
Look, if you want me to go to all the trouble of posting links to court documents just for your edification, you had damned well better show the energy and interest in learning something beyond just blathering the party line. What I posted to you is reality: major stockholders use tax-exempt foundations to make "charitable" donations to NGOs that manipulate access to resources in order to manipulate the market. They effectively socialize control under complicit agencies because buying government influence over markets is cheaper than competing head to head. That was the real reason for limited government: it doesn't have the power to sell favors.
The founders of this country understood corporate mercantilism and feared it greatly. So should you.
Voters have been conditioned to chase whatever bogeyman or fear whatever bugaboo the miseducated dolts in the MSM (and their foul-minded masters) tell them is Public Enemy #1 (today).
Entirely too many folks ON THIS FORUM display the same pavlovian behaviour.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.