GQP Ready To Slash Everywhere Except Billions In Oil/Gas Tax Breaks; Big Oil, Meanwhle, Fighting For Fat New Tax Break
If the only things certain in life are death and taxes, you might say corporate lobbyists spend much of their time trying to avoid at least one of the two. Few industries understand this better than oil and gas, which has benefited for at least a century from some tax rules that save them billions of dollars in payments annually. The world’s nations have agreed to phase out fossil fuel subsidies globally. The Biden administration pledged to axe them domestically. Still, they persist.
Now, with Republicans in Congress and the Trump administration determined to enact $4.5 trillion in tax cuts and desperately looking for revenue and spending cuts to pay for them, some environmental advocacy groups are highlighting the tax benefits that flow to one of the world’s most profitable industries, which the Biden administration estimated at $110 billion over the decade ending in 2034. The oil and gas industry, meanwhile, is playing both offense and defense, trying to maintain the benefits it has while working to enact at least one new one, which would shield some oil companies from a tax enacted as part of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.
One of the biggest sources of new revenue from the IRA was a corporate alternative minimum tax, which was meant to prevent companies that reported large profits to investors from using loopholes to pay little to no taxes. The minimum tax applies to all industries. For oil and gas, it has hit some of the large independent drillers in particular (as opposed to the “integrated” majors like ExxonMobil and Chevron). The money involved is significant: According to a new analysis by United to End Polluter Handouts, a coalition of environmental and progressive groups, at least three companies—EOG Resources, APA Corp. and Ovintiv—reported paying nearly $200 million collectively to the Treasury under the minimum tax since it was enacted in 2022.
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When it comes to the largest oil and gas companies, however, their focus might be elsewhere. When the American Petroleum Institute issued its five-point policy roadmap for the Trump administration and Congress in November, it highlighted a need to maintain what it called “crucial international tax provisions.” Just one of those provisions, the so-called dual capacity taxpayer rule, is expected to save oil and gas companies $71.5 billion over a decade, according to Biden administration estimates.
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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/24032025/congress-oil-industry-tax-breaks/