Exxon Mobil’s Tax Rate Drops To 13 Percent, After Making 35 Percent More Profits On Rising Gas Price [View all]

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http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/03/26/452213/exxon-mobils-tax-rate-drops-to-13-percent-after-making-35-percent-more-profits-in-2011/

Exxon Mobil’s Tax Rate Drops To 13 Percent, After Making 35 Percent More Profits On Rising Gas Prices In 2011
By Rebecca Leber on Mar 26, 2012 at 6:13 pm

Exxon Mobil, the most profitable of the big five oil companies, made $41.1 billion in profits last year. Although Exxon made 35 percent more profits since 2010, its estimated effective tax rate actually dropped. Citizens for Tax Justice reported Exxon paid only 17.6 percent taxes in 2010, lower than the average American, and a Reuters analysis using the same criteria estimates that Exxon will pay only 13 percent in effective taxes for 2011. Exxon paid zero taxes to the federal government in 2009.
Reuters compares the 45 percent tax rate Exxon claims it pays to the effective rate estimated by Citizens for Tax Justice — a rate that’s even lower than Mitt Romney’s tax rate. Chevron, which made $26.9 billion profit in 2011, paid 19 percent:
Citizens for Tax Justice considers U.S. profits and U.S. taxes paid only. By that measure, Exxon Mobil paid 13 percent of its U.S. income in taxes after deductions and benefits in 2011, according to a Reuters calculation of securities filings.
It is a far cry from the 35 percent top corporate tax rate.

Still, the three-year average for telecom companies is 8 percent; for information technology services companies, it is 2.5 percent, according to CTJ.

Chevron CEO John Watson recently claimed “We’re the highest taxed industry that I’m aware of” while the American Petroleum Institute has claimed the industry pays a tax rate at more than 40 percent



http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/05/tax_man.html

Exxon Mobil Corp.'s robust balance sheets have become a poster child for what The New York Times dubs the “paradox of the United States tax code.”

The company’s large 2010 profits allowed them to lead Fortune 500’s annual ranking of the nations’ most profitable firms for the eighth time in a row. But the oil giant’s average effective tax rates are roughly half the 35 percent tax rate that currently stands as the high-water mark for American corporations. Meanwhile, Exxon Mobil and other big oil companies continue to exploit tax loopholes for nearly $4 billion in subsidies each year. These subsidies include write-offs for drilling costs and a deduction for domestic production that was intended for manufacturers, not big oil producers.

Exxon Mobil registered an average 17.6 percent federal effective corporate tax rate on its annual earnings in the three years spanning 2008 to 2010. Its average domestic profits exceeded $6.8 billion. And as a 2011 Citizens for Tax Justice report points out:

Over the past two years, ExxonMobil reported $9,910 million in pretax U.S. profits. But it enjoyed so many tax subsidies that its federal income tax bill was only $39 million—a tax rate of only 0.4 percent.

I pay a higher rate as a teacher