Comments on: I seem to have lost my dog and pony, have you seen them?

By: ATLien

ATLien — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 19:26:45 +0000

The reason their profits have been increasing is because the price of crude oil has been going up. bringing gas prices up with them ; thus increasing the dollar amount of sales. Profit � up. Profit margins � ’bout the same ..~10%

Over the past three years Exxon Mobile has paid an average of $27 billion a year in taxes, 41% of Exxon’s taxable income.

In 2004 there were 130 million individual tax returns filed. If you take the bottom 50% of those tax returns � 65 million of them � and add up the total amount of taxes those households paid you come up with $27.4 billion. This means that one corporation, Exxon Mobile, pays as much in taxes to the federal government as do the bottom half of individual taxpayers.

The question is: do you honestly think Exxon dug into their pockets to pay those taxes, or did they pass it on to the consumer, like any other tax paid by a business? How many similar burdensome regulations and taxes end up screwing all Americans?

By: Captain Holly

Captain Holly — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 18:10:39 +0000

The biggest joke of all is that the springtime price spikes are directly the fault of Congress.

Thanks to the Clean Air Act, as soon as it warms up refiners have to start making special blends to help different cities meet their ozone emission mandates. That drives prices up, because that’s a special product that has a limited market.

In addition, they have relatively little extra refining capacity to make it with, because — you guessed it — the Clean Air Act makes it prohibitively expensive to build a new refinery.

If Congress really wanted to cause prices to drop, they’d suspend the Clean Air Act. You’d see prices tumble, much as they did post-Katrina when President Bush temporarily did the same thing in order to increase supply.

By: TheGunGeek

TheGunGeek — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 17:11:04 +0000

I just love the way they keep talking about how the oil companies made a collective $140 Billion and yet they are still getting an $18 Billion subsidy. I don’t know how many times I heard that before I found out that the $140B was for one year and the $18B is spread out over the next 10 years.

Guess it wouldn’t sound so bad to say they made $140B and were getting a subsidy of $1.8B in addition to that.

By: Madrocketscientist

Madrocketscientist — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 15:38:08 +0000

I don’t care if they are making record profits, but do I need to be giving them gas money AND tax money if they are so far in the black?

By: Gregory Morris

Gregory Morris — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 12:47:24 +0000

If congress really cared about the price WE PAY for gas, they’d first drop the gasoline tax to provide quick relief, then they’d allow oil companies to tap into some of America’s oil reserves for longer-term relief.