Replying to a message of Jeff Binkley to All:

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

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

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

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



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

--- FleetStreet 1.19+