TAXPAYERS FOR COMMON SENSE:

Taxes a la mode


Apr 29, 2011


Adding insult to injury, taxpayers recently found out that BP was able to save $13 billion on their taxes by writing off their losses associated with last summer’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Talk about a silver – golden – lining.

So not only were we left with an environmental disaster in the gulf, diminished economies in the neighboring states, and the use of federal resources, but the federal budget sank deeper into the red because BP could write off its losses.

This isn’t to say that BP wanted the spill to happen. Who can forget their then-CEO Tony Hayward famously telling us “There’s no one who wants this over more than I do. I would like my life back.” But it’s hard to believe this was what tax writers had in mind when they decided to allow companies to deduct losses from their tax payments.

So it goes with the tax code. As it increases in complexity with more loopholes, carve outs, and sweeteners added to encourage this or that activity, the law of unintended consequences – and cost – continues to grow.

This isn’t just dodges and abusive tax shelters. The tax code is riddled with provisions picking winners and losers. Provisions that favor one industry or investment over another without any oversight or accounting of the costs, or even whether these preferential tax policies are achieving what politicians claimed they would.

For example, the home mortgage interest deduction has increased the cost of homes and contributed to the housing bubble while countries without similar tax policies -- Canada, England -- have roughly the same or higher rates of home ownership. Or, the deduction for employer provided health care plans which has subsidized so-called Cadillac health care plans, helped render invisible to the insured the true cost of health insurance, and hindered shifts in the workforce because people are tied to their jobs because of health insurance.

Since the last fundamental reform in 1986, tax entropy has occurred, making the code more complex and less ordered. Like a forest never allowed to burn, the underbrush and debris piles up, choking out life and making it impossible to navigate. What we need is a controlled burn in the tax code.

We can start right now with the long list of energy tax breaks. This week the oil and gas companies are releasing their first quarter results and unlike those of us feeling pain at the pump, these corporations are pumping up their bottom lines. ExxonMobil announced that it made more than $10.7 billion in profits, roughly $5 million an hour for the last three months. The industries’ tax breaks are deeply imbedded in the code – some are nearly 100 years old. But they are all over the place – a deduction for exploration, another for depletion of their assets, another for royalties they pay to foreign governments. The list goes on, and some in Congress are trying to add to that list. Talk about wrong-headed.

We should rip all of the energy tax breaks out by their roots. Uncle Sam and well-heeled lobbyists shouldn’t be picking winners and losers in the code whether they be wind and solar or oil and gas. And let’s be clear – the big winner, not surprisingly, is oil and gas, which spent more than $30 million in campaign contributions during the last election and $150 million on lobbying in 2010. A pretty sound investment for their billions in tax breaks.

Last year’s fiscal commission called for tackling tax expenditures, the President went after them in his budget, so did House Budget Chairman Ryan in his budget, and just the other day he said “subsidies for all energy companies need to be reduced or eliminated so that we can get government out of the business of picking winners and losers in the market.” Here, here. Time for Congress to quit yappin’ and get cuttin’.

http://taxpayer.net/sarticle.php?proj_id=4477&t=Taxes%20a%20la%20mode

HERITAGE FOUNDATION

Morning Bell: Obama’s Anti-Drilling Agenda


President Obama’s oil spill commission will release its long-awaited final report this morning, recommending new government regulations and limits on drilling. These conclusions could shape the future of the oil industry — and impact our nation’s energy policy for years to come.


The commission’s primary focus was determining the cause of the spill. Last week it revealed that errors by BP, Transocean and Halliburton contributed to the blowout of the Macondo well, resulting in the deaths of 11 people and the worst spill in history.

But the commission’s members have decided to go a step further. The anti-drilling measures recommended in their report would take America in the wrong direction. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. Obama picked five members who lack expertise in drilling and have a history of donating to Democrats. One member leads the Natural Resources Defense Council.

READ MORE:  http://blog.heritage.org/2011/01/11/morning-bell-obamas-anti-drilling-agenda/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell

From Tea Party Nation "Moment of Clarity"

Self-Inflicted

Posted by Tim Nerenz on November 4, 2010

No, my dear Democrat friends, it wasn’t secret money from overseas, or the media failure to explain health care, or talk radio hosts, or Fox News, or the racist tea parties, or Americans for Prosperity that cost you the election today – you did this to yourselves.


It started with the TARP bank bailouts; the American people were 8:1 opposed and you passed it anyway – twice. Then the stimulus; overwhelmingly opposed but you passed that, too. Then you hosed the bond-holders and gave GM and Chrysler to the unions – they took our $50 billion and went bankrupt anyway. Don’t forget foreclosure relief that let people default twice on our nickel – it was the bankruptcy attorneys that loved you for that one, not us.

And then there was health care; you had three chances to bail out with dignity but you rammed it down our throats instead. You threatened to "deem it" if you couldn’t get the votes, even though two thirds of the American people were against your bill – a bill so ridiculous you had to pass it to learn what was in it. Just to rub it in, you nationalized student loans in an 11th hour amendment.

Next came the BP oil spill; three months of looking around for an ass to kick but having no trouble finding the right one to kiss – preventing foreign assistance to please your union masters again. And then there was the bailout of the teachers’ unions – overriding every single school board and state department of education in the nation who had not seen fit to raise compensation in a fiscal crisis.

Should I go on? Cap and Trade, Cash-4-Clunkers, the President’s 60 rounds of golf, Michelle’s Spanish vacation, your two any-gal-will-do Supreme Court appointments, tanking the Fed audit, suing Arizona, ACORN’s hidden camera fiasco, letting the Black Panthers walk, re-appointing Ben Bernanke, and the internet kill switch.

You adjourned your session, allowing the largest tax increase in the history of the world to take effect without the courtesy of a vote. You failed to adjust the AMT in your haste to hit the campaign trail. You offered a $250 check to seniors after you gutted their Medicare and hit them with a 55% inheritance tax – as if you could bribe the Greatest Generation anyway.

Your economic plan was worse than nothing. 15 million Americans are out of work, 9 million more are underemployed, and another 1.2 million have quit looking altogether. Home values are falling, the dollar is falling, real GDP is falling; the only thing going up is gold, unless you count the national debt and the number of troops you keep sending to a war you don’t know how to win.

You called us racist. You called us dumb. You called us enemies, hicks, astro-turf, the great unwashed. You made fun of our reverence for the Constitution and our commitment to our faiths. You don’t like our guns, our trucks, our groceries, our hobbies, our rallies, our Facebook Pages, or our women who think for themselves - witches, bitches, and whores, you called them. You hate it when we prosper, and you hate us when we speak our minds.

How could you possibly expect that we would vote for you after all that? No, seriously – did you really think we would reward you at the polls? Did you?

Your wounds are all self-inflicted. You turned the Democratic Party of JFK into the Social Democrat Party of Dean, Pelosi, Obama, Frank, Klugman, and ACORN. You turned government into an ultimatum and we picked "or else". You tried to make America into France, so we said, "au revoir". You thought your ends justified your means, so we introduced you to our ends. That’s what happened today - it wasn’t done to you by anyone else, you did it to yourselves.

The coalition of conservatives, libertarians, constitutionalists, and independents that purged unprincipled Republicans in the primaries and cleansed the Congress today will not go lay by our dish just because Nancy Pelosi has been dethroned. Our mission did not end yesterday, it has only begun.

So my advice to all of the new Republican members of the next Congress is this: don’t sign a three year lease on that townhouse in Georgetown. Do what we sent you to do and you will be re-elected; if not, then you will be tossed onto the gut-pile of phonies who say one thing to get our vote and then do another once they are in Washington.

You guys work for us, not the other way around. We fired the Republicans in 2006; they brought it on themselves. And we fired the Democrats today; they brought it on themselves. Here’s a tip: if you want to avoid being on the receiving end in 2012, try being a little nicer to the boss.

You have four jobs to do: revive the economy, revive the economy, revive the economy, and revive the economy.

You have just seen four years of what not to do from Nancy Pelosi, George W. Bush, Ben Bernanke, and President Obama. If they passed it, repeal it; if they raised it, cut it; if they banned it, liberate it; if they were for it, don’t do it; if they were against it, then let ‘er rip.

Yes, it is that easy. We did our part, now go do yours.

"Moment Of Clarity" is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D. Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment and order his new book, "Tooth Fairy Government."

http://www.teapartynation.com/profiles/blogs/selfinflicted-1

Obama wants 15 Million Dollars for "Expert" Oil Commission

Obama wants 15 Million Dollars for "Expert" Oil Commission


By Connie Hair, Human Events

The White House asked Congress late Wednesday for $15 million -- a whopping $2.5 million per month for six months -- to fund their expert commission of academics to study the Gulf oil-rig explosion and the disastrous spill that followed.

In a letter to Congress, which was obtained by HUMAN EVENTS, White House Budget Director Peter Orszag requested the money to fund the work of the “National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling.”

While tens of thousands are put out of work by Obama’s six-month Gulf deep water drilling moratorium -- and people lose generational legacies of work pulling their livelihoods out of the sea with their bare hands from fishing nets and crab traps -- the president is spending more money in a month on his academic commission to study the issue than any one of these hard working families will make in a lifetime of real work.

Read More and Comment:
http://www.impeachobamacampaign.com/obama-wants-15-million-dollars-for-expert-oil-commission/