Obama Just Refused to Lower Your Taxes
Liberals joined President Obama by refusing to consider a reduction in corporate taxes which are some of the highest in the world. A lot of people will think this is a good thing. Stick it to those corporations.
Here’s how the rejection of tax cuts is being reported:
“A group of congressional liberals being that include Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) teamed up with President Obama to kill tax cut deal that would have given hundreds of billions of dollars to the wealthy and corporations.”
What liberals won’t tell low information voters is that corporations don’t pay taxes — any taxes — ever. Only individuals pay taxes.
When a corporation is taxed, it counts those taxes as an expense similar to rent, insurance, utilities, R&D, transportation, advertising, and every other expense necessary to run a business. All business expenses are passed on to consumers. That means that they are passed on to you and me. When Congress calls for more taxes on Big Oil (or any company), they are actually calling for a tax on us. This is in addition to the taxes we already pay to the state where we buy gasoline or diesel, as well as the federal government.
Governments bring in more money than the oil companies make in profit without taking any risks. Governments just collect the money. Actually, the gasoline stations collect the money, which also costs them, and sends the state and federal governments a fat check paid for by you and me.
With gas prices in freefall, governments are still getting their taxes while oil companies, actually stock holders, will be seeing less in their retirement portfolios. There is no Mr. Exxon. Millions of people own Exxon stock. There is no Mr. Coca Cola. Millions of people own Coca Cola stock.
Liberals are in the business of creating class warfare to keep them in power at our expense. It’s one of the ways they can tax without a groundswell of opposition. There are fewer corporations when compared to individual voters. So by campaigning on a “tax the corporations” platform, politicians can appease and gain the support of tax payers. In the end, however, taxpayers are getting stuck with the higher taxes corporations will pay.
A tax on one company reverberates through other companies. The tax expenses are passed on down the line to companies purchasing goods and services and then down to us.
Some of the raw materials that are produced from petroleum (“rock oil) are synthetic cloth, plastics, paint, inks, tires, cosmetics, car parts, computer parts, and too many other products to list.
When the oil companies are taxed because of their “excess profits,” the prices of all products that use oil go up. When people want Congress to tax Big Oil or any other company, they are only calling for a tax on themselves.
Then there are the myths regarding oil company profits which are necessary to explore for new oil reserves. Consider these facts posted on Exxon Mobil’s Perspective Blog:
“For every gallon of gasoline, diesel or finished products we manufactured and sold in the United States in the last three months of 2010, we earned a little more than 2 cents per gallon. That’s not a typo. Two cents.”
Exxon reported in 2010 that it made less than 8 cents for every dollar of revenue from all their businesses around the world. Compare gasoline taxes (combined local, state and federal), which range from a low of 26.4 cents per gallon in Alaska to a high of 66.1 cents per gallon in California, averaging 48.1 cents per gallon across all states.
We should also keep in mind that “at the beginning of the twenty-first century, 1.5 million people in the United States were employed in the petroleum industry.” Consider that these big companies pay an equal amount of Social Security and Medicare taxes (more than 7 percent) on each employee. Then there are ever-rising healthcare costs. These, too, are passed on to you and me every time we purchase something made from oil.
If a company ever gets to the point that it can’t pass on the cost of an increase in taxes, it either (1) goes overseas where corporate taxes are lower, labor is less expensive (because of lower taxes and regulations), and an absence of unions or (2) they go out of business.