

  (Source: Washington Times)


I. Good Things Come in Small Packages
















Georgia Plant


For more reading, dive into the full report below.

Sources: Univ. of Chicago, EPIC

Comments     Threshold


RE: Government intervention
By ppardee on 12/15/2011 3:45:00 PM , Rating: 5
It was an example of how to spin the numbers, which the liberal media does constantly. These numbers are 100% accurate (insofar as they aren't falsified).

First, this is US taxes and US earnings only. The corporate tax around the world is much lower. Second, the 'earned' refers to net profits. So, while this statement seems to say that they had an effective tax rate of 145%, in reality, it only means that they paid more taxes to the government than they were able to retain as profits in the US (The taxes came out of gross earnings). The extension of this statement and yours would be that even though they made record profits, they also paid record taxes.

Another spin in the other direction is that Exxon's effective tax rate is lower than the average American's, (this is Center for American Progress's spin) which takes Exxon's global effective tax rate (about 24%, but CAP figures it down to 17% some how, and 2% in the text with the given numbers) and ignores American's who don't pay any taxes and uses average rather than median, which would give a better idea of who pays what.

In any case, it's all bogus and you have to actually look at the real numbers to see that the oil industry isn't screwing anyone or getting a sweet deal from the government and their profit margins are about 5%, which isn't insane. Record profits are a result of record demand. Same way Wal-Mart makes money (without giving the shaft to employees.)

