Tax - preferential rates, exemptions

Multinational firms often use complicated corporate structures and arcane provisions of the tax code to minimize or eliminate their global tax payments. Arcane changes in tax rules can give rise to big losses in tax revenues to country treasuries, as happened in the 2017 tax law passed under the Trump Administration, to the great benefit of oil and gas firms. Under this law, companies that extract oil and gas overseas enjoy special exemptions within the Global Intangible Low-Tax (GILTI) regime covering Foreign Oil and Gas Extraction Income (FOGEI).

This analysis looks at the last two decades of investment data for US oil and gas fields to evaluate how major federal subsidies may have played a role in the huge boom in US oil and gas production. It finds that federal subsidies amplified the expected financial returns of investing in unconventional oil and gas development, thereby helping to spur and sustain the US shale boom over the last two decades.

In 2013, the U.S. federal and state governments gave away $21.6 billion in subsidies for oil, gas, and coal exploration and production.

Using an open architecture approach, the Energy Tax Breaks Wiki hopes to tabulate information on the applicablity and value of various federal tax breaks to energy in the United States.  The site is a joint project of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law and the Center for Land Use and Environmental Responsibility at the Louis D. Brandeis School of Law at the University of Louisville.

Pennsylvania is subsidizing fossil fuels at a cost of almost $2.9 billion per year.  Use of these fuels burdens taxpayers with additional non-monetized externalities such as air, land and water pollution and the associated negative human health and property impacts. Since many of these subsidies were passed years or decades ago, Pennsylvania’s current policymakers may not all be aware that these subsidies exist or understand their cumulative impacts.

Numerous energy subsidies exist in the U.S. tax code and have been there for up to a century. In certain cases the circumstances relevant at the time of implementation may no longer exist. Today, for example, the domestic fossil fuel industries (coal, oil, natural gas) are mature and highly profitable, and numerous other energy resources that do not create the negative health and environmental effects associated with the extraction and burning of fossil fuels are available.

During World War I, U.S. taxpayers provided the oil and gas industry with its first federal tax break. Over the decades, more lucrative tax breaks have been added. The latest major installment came with the passage of the 2005 Energy Policy Act, which included another $2.6 billion in subsidies for oil & gas companies. But it hasn’t stopped there. As recently as December of 2011, oil and gas companies received more subsidies. Each year the oil and gas industry takes advantage of tax breaks and other subsidies worth billions of dollars.

Not a document for the faint-of-heart, but one of the best resources for learning about the vast array of federal tax provisions that are now doling out more than a trillion dollars of special exemptions for various groups in the economy.  A good book to tuck under your arm when you head out to the beach...

The Democratic Staff of the Committee on Natural Resources of the U.S.