Scrap Energy Tax Favors for Better Reform

The Daily Signal ^ | December 5, 2019 | Katie Tubb

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

It’s that time of year again when Congress, feeling the pressure of budget negotiations and the year’s end, provokes the issue of expired or soon-to-expire energy tax credits.

Congress has on the table roughly a dozen renewable energy tax subsidies covering wind, solar, electric vehicles, biofuels, and others.

There’s a host of reasons why these energy subsidies should end, not least of which being Congress’ 2015 promise to phase out two “temporary” credits that have been around for decades—wind and solar. These two alone divert $23 billion and $12.5 billion, respectively, between 2018 and 2022, and will continue to burden taxpayers long after.

Heritage Foundation senior tax policy analyst Adam Michel sums up well the many problems with tax subsidies: Tax credits “grant economic privileges to well-connected industries and allow the government to pick winners and losers in the market.”

So what is a congressman to do when the lobbyist for electric cars or solar panels comes knocking on the door, or a colleague offers a tax credit or two as a bargaining chip?

Offer up a variety of other policies to help renewable companies compete without rigging tax policy or energy markets:

1. Demand parity. Some in the nuclear industry have argued that if solar and wind get a new round of tax credits as emissions-free power, so should they—it’s only fair. They have a point. But instead of piling more burdens onto taxpayers, Congress should make the system fair by cutting all energy subsidies. Congress already eliminated several tax credits for the oil and gas industries in 2017, and presumably put wind and solar credits on track to phase out (if it can keep that promise). Congress should finish the process.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

PING!

[oldtech]

If wind & solar can’t make it on their own(and I doubt they can) then the gov’t. should cut them free. Subsidization is a pretty good indication they are not worth the trouble.