Replying to a message of Jeff Binkley to Bob Ackley:

 JB>>> Over the past 25 years oil companies paid more that $2.2T in
 JB>>> taxes to federal and state governments --  not including local
 JB>>> property taxes, state sales and severance taxes, and onshore
 JB>>> royalty payments --  more than three times their profits during
 JB>>> the same period according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis and
 JB>>> the US Department of Energy.

 JB>>> In 2008, US oil companies paid more in corporate income taxes to
 JB>>> the IRS ($138B) than individual taxes paid by more than 100
 JB>>> million individual tax payers in the bottom 75 percent of all
 JB>>> individual tax payers (est. $136B), calculates Dr. Perry

 JB>>> Over the past three years, Exxon Mobil has paid an average of
 JB>>> $27B  annually in taxes --  as much as the bottom 50 percent  of
 JB>>> individual  taxpayers, 65 million people.

 JB>>> The total effective tax rate on oil is about 40 percent, the
 JB>>> average  income tax rate for all corporations is 35 percent.

 BA>> 

 BA>> You forget, Jeff, as did Dr. Perry, that the oil companies did not
 BA>> pay one thin dime in taxes to anybody.  Their customers did, the
 BA>> taxes they 'paid' were passed directly through to those customers.
 BA>> All business do that, if they didn't they'd go out of business.

 JB> And so when Obama claims to tax our way to cheap gasoline with this 
 JB> windfall nonsense, he is fleecing his constituents.  I hope others
 JB> see  that too.

You are correct.  The so-called 'windfall profits tax' will just be passed along,
like all other taxes, to those who purchase the product or service provided.

What I'd like to see is a 110% tax on *dividends* paid by the company/companies,
a 110% tax on the gain-on-sale for those who sell their stock in those companies 
(obviously zero for those who have no gain or a loss on said sale), plus a 150% tax
on retained earnings in excess of the previous year's retained earnings for those
companies.  I think we'd see a precipitate drop in the price of fuel were that to
happen.

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