In a CNN article they say specifically for 2009 that Exxon paid income tax bills as follows:

U.S. federal: -$156 million
U.S. state and local: $110 million
International: $15.2 billion

You can find those figures in the 10-k annual report for 2009 or maybe buried in the annual report.

That sums up to paying $15.1 billion about. Yet in 2009 in the US the fed, state & local gave Exxon a subsidy of $46 million.

For 2010 they actually did pay Income taxes in the USA. The 10-k just came out a few weeks ago and hasn’t made it into a annual report document. Buried way down in the depths of their recent 10k report for 2010 on page 111 they give the following figures :

U.S. federal: $1319 million
U.S. state and local: $340 million
International: $19.9 billion

So this past year Exxon did pay taxes in the USA. But again the vast majority of their income taxes are paid in other countries.

If paying 41% on Exxon’s corporate profits is too little, what do you contend is the right percentage? And what ROA, ROI and ROE would application of that tax rate result in for Exxon investors?

Look, if you think oil production should be banned, just say so and make your argument honestly. But don’t raise fake arguments about how oil companies don’t pay any taxes. I have no idea what Fox news says on the issue since I don’t watch TV news, but if they are saying the same thing I am, I agree with them, and you’ve offered nothing to contradict it.

I applaud your efforts to get your finances under control and am sorry that your employment situation has made that more difficult. I’m traveling the same rough path of recovery. You cite the derivative effects of higher energy costs, not the price of a gallon of gas as the source of your hardship. Which is pretty much the point I was trying to make. Expensive oil strangles our economy in many ways, one of the smallest ways is the direct effect of gasoline on the average household budget. I’m sorry but I have to disagree on the amount of people THAT really affects in the way most people like to pretend it does.

And Nate, it’s a much larger group than you are apparently aware.

Yes an extra unplanned $40 expense sucks, but is it REALLY as life changing for the average American as all the hang-wringing media likes to report?

It bothers me too, but from a general-health-of-the-economy sort of way. I don’t pretend that I can’t simply choose to cut some other non-essential part of my budget to put food on the table when faced with the horror of 10% of my budget suddenly becoming 13%.

I don’t mean to belittle the folks whose transportation costs are a huge part of a tight budget. But let’s be honest, that’s a pretty small group of people. I get annoyed when people who spend several hundred per month on luxury (shopping, eating out, cable tv, etc etc) pretend that high gas prices are causing them such hardship. It’s just something else to complain about in an incredibly fortunate time and place to be born into.

I really hope that the real threat of high fuel prices to the general economy in the long run doesn’t give us something to really complain about.

Then google “oil subsidies”.

Or just hang out at foxnews.com all day…

For example, Exxon Mobil paid $21.6 Billion (out of net income of about $51 Billion) last year. That’s almost 41%. On top of that, the shareholders had to pay income taxes on the dividends they received, so there was another $2-4 Billion there. And that doesn’t count state and local taxes, nor the federal and state gasoline taxes.

I’m sure there are some ‘subsidies’ in the tax code to encourage capital investment or new hires, the same as all businesses have, but when you say that they pay practically no taxes and the “whole industryis subsidized by govenrment/taxpayer money,” you are straying far from the facts.

The only time Americans ever reduced their oil usage was when oil hit $4/gallon after Katrina. No one would dare raise gas taxes to a level to support the maintenance of roads, so YES! THERE ARE SEVERAL WHO WELCOME THE HIGHER PRICE OF OIL.

We will become more efficient. We will buy more fuel efficient cars and industry will get more efficient as well.

Cheers, Ian

I don’t “welcome” higher gas prices. Thats like “welcoming” the flu, to prove you can keep yourself from getting dehydrated, or feeling fatigued.

Just plain insane to “welcome” more hardships.

Lets see how you “welcome” eating beans and rice, and having your house foreclosed on. And if not you, then, some of your close friends or relatives.

Just that!

The Soviet Union tightly controlled its subjects’ mobility as part of a police state that sought to control every other aspect of their lives as well. As a method of limiting externalized costs, it may be overkill.

Since you obviously believe our recent foreign adventures have been “all about oil” have you considered that the people most responsible may be those whose strict environmentalism has restricted our ability to use our own oil? (I don’t offer that as a sound argument, because as Jim has pointed out oil is a commodity and more U.S. drilling may bring down the price but is unlikely to shut down Middle Eastern oil wells. But while economically unsound, the claim is logically consistent with the argument you’re making.)

Your answer to Miguel was spot-on.

@moom,

Given your expertise, I’d be interested in your opinion on whether there is adequate incentive at this time for oil exploration in the U.S. My impression is that the political climate is so hostile to U.S. drilling and we’re so poorly exploiting our known resources, that there’s little point in looking for more.

Gas taxes, tolls, pay-per-mile taxe. Whatever. I just wished the US government started treating mobility like the Soviet Union did and started to make consumers internalize their external costs.

Still, I do see what you mean: Johanna should not necessarily assume that merely because someone is an idiot, that person must be a man.

In fairness, she has some evidence from my previous post in which I used one too many negatives and said the exact opposite of what I meant. But the fact that all men are idiots does not logically imply that all idiots are men.

Some deconstruction: “Ruiter” is a Dutch word that meant “rider” in the sense of someone who sat on the back of a beast (usually a horse) and hoped thereby to get somewhere faster than by walking. You may wonder why this someone didn’t take out a mortgage on a Toyota Prius instead, but: [a] these had not been invented; [b] even if they had been, horses are a more environmentally sound mode of transport; [c] you can’t park anywhere in the Netherlands, as those who have been there will readily testify.

“Ruiter” has some chivalric connotations: the important people who went about on horseback in the old days were knights (of the Round Table, Templar, and so forth). The knight in chess was called “de Ruiter” in Dutch until not all that long ago (nowadays it is simply called “paard”, which means “horse”). Whether or not our deRuiter thinks of zitself in those terms is unclear; I draw only the tentative conclusion from the length of its posts that – like the Beatles – it wants to be a paperback Ruiter.

Indeed. But I think that should be “herself”.