Taxes

U.S. Senators Introduce Energy Revenue-Sharing Legislation

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A new revenue-sharing bill – the FAIR Act – would enable coastal states to receive a share of offshore energy revenue and put onshore renewable energy on the same scale as onshore fossil energy to ensure equitable revenue-sharing to encourage clean energy efforts.

On March 20, Senators Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) introduced the Fixing America’s Inequity with Revenues (FAIR) Act to provide states with a share of revenue from energy developed on federal land and waters. Under the FAIR Act, coastal states would be entitled to 27.5% of revenue from offshore energy developments, including fossil, wind, and wave energy, and an additional 10% if they establish funds to support clean energy and energy conservation programs. The federal government would receive the remaining 62.55% to address budget deficits. Keep reading →

 /  Published March 28, 2013 at 1:00 PM

Seven Reasons Loan Guarantees Are Bad Policy

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Advocates of loan guarantees claim that this subsidy is a success when the recipient company remains in business. This is a superficial and misleading way to view loan guarantees. Indeed, loan guarantees are among the most pernicious ways that governments distort markets and harm American families and businesses alike. Here are seven reasons why.

This piece was originally posted on the Heritage Foundation’s website. Learn more here. Keep reading →

 /  Published March 21, 2013 at 10:30 AM

Muni Bonds Fight Intensifies in the Power Sector

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Municipal bonds are a major source of financing for public power projects, and their tax-exempt status is one of the factors that makes them appealing for investors who might otherwise demand higher returns on their money.

The American Public Power Association has launched an intense campaign to undermine current proposals before Congress that would change the current tax advantages municipal bonds enjoy. As the hunt continues in DC for new revenue that can help plug growing budget deficits that in turn have incurred repeated political crisis, long-held tenets of tax code advantages and exemptions have begun to come under review. Keep reading →

 /  Published March 19, 2013 at 2:40 PM

NRG CEO David Crane Offers Top Priorities for Incoming Energy Secretary

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On Friday, March 1st, 2013, NRG Energy President & CEO David Crane took the stage at the MIT Energy Conference to offer the Friday Keynote Address to a packed theater.

MIT Energy Initiative Executive Director Melanie Kenderdine moderated the Friday Keynote in a one-on-one Davos-style conversational interview. In it, she asked Crane to offer his advice to the yet-to-be-named incoming Department of Energy nominee. The question timed nicely with the White House announcement on the following Monday, which put forward MIT Professor and MIT Energy Initiative Director Dr. Ernest J. Moniz as the nominee for Secretary of the DOE. Keep reading →

 /  Published March 6, 2013 at 2:45 PM

Exxon Paid Roughly Twice the Income Tax as Apple Last Year

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Tax code reform is expected to be high on the US political agenda this year and the issue of tax breaks or subsidies for Big Oil is often tossed around as part of the discussion. However, despite receiving various tax incentives, oil companies pay more in taxes than many other US-based multinational firms.

In their dogged pursuit of sensational headlines, media companies love to make a big deal about the largest US company by market capitalization, a title that ExxonMobil and Apple have traded for the past few years. Exxon recently reported its fourth quarter and full-year 2012 financials and on net income of roughly $45 billion last year, which is slightly higher than Apple’s approximately $42 billion, the oil company paid about twice as much in income taxes. Keep reading →

 /  Published February 7, 2013 at 9:15 AM

Tax Breaks: Where The Big Money Is

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If Congress and President Obama are ever going to get serious about tax reform, they will have to rethink some of the biggest and most popular tax breaks. It won’t be easy. Those tax breaks mostly benefit powerful voting blocs: the middle-class and the wealthy. The federal government gives up $1 trillion in revenue every year because of the hundreds of tax credits, deductions, exemptions and exclusions in the tax code. And the top 10 account for most of that $1 trillion. (Table of Top 10 below.)

 /  Published February 5, 2013 at 11:00 AM

Ending Corn Ethanol Subsidies Not Just an Oil Industry Fight

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The Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), a federal policy requiring that ethanol be blended into the U.S. gasoline supply at annually increasing amounts, has been touted by the biofuels industry as the solution to a myriad of energy woes. But in the seven years since the policy was enacted, the RFS has failed to meet its goals of protecting the environment and reducing dependence on foreign oil. It has and is forcing Americans to pay more for fuel, and it has raised food prices around the world. And yet, ethanol lobbying groups continue to argue on behalf of the policy, armed with an array of invalid claims:

Myth: “Oil is the cause of casualties abroad and economic volatility at home.” Keep reading →

 /  Published January 31, 2013 at 9:00 AM

The Legacy of Dodd-Frank

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Once upon a time it was believed that an excess of regulatory oversight would prove itself to be justified. Such a belief was short lived. In the case of the Dodd-Frank Act, it’s not only the regulation that’s complex; it is the uncertainty of if, how and when it applies.

The Dodd-Frank Act was signed into federal law in 2010, and it brought about game-changing modifications to financial legislation in over fifty years. Some of the biggest challenges are based on the requisite interpretation of over 1,000 new pages of law. Keep reading →

 /  Published January 24, 2013 at 8:30 AM

Breaking the Oil Monopoly With Renewable Fuel

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The oil industry has taken aim at the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) in a self-interested bid to retain dominance over America’s transportation fuel sector. Our dependence on oil is stifling consumer choice and jeopardizing our national security. Fixing those issues means diversifying our fuel supply; that means breaking the oil monopoly.

We are a nation addicted to oil and until the RFS was created in 2005, we had no infrastructure to break that addiction. The RFS increases consumer choice and energy security, while simultaneously decreasing the overall negative impacts that oil dependence has on our economy and environment. That benefit –consumer choice – is exactly why the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, which spent over $1.6 million lobbying in the fourth quarter of 2012 alone, is funding efforts attacking the policy. Keep reading →

 /  Published January 15, 2013 at 4:00 PM

Post-election US Energy Policy Considerations

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Numerous factors are set to influence US energy policy under the second Obama Administration and during the new Congress, including a leadership change at the EPA, tax code reformation, fracking, the Keystone Pipeline and Alaskan oil exploration, just to name a few.

In this video, Breaking Energy discusses important energy policy considerations for the administration, the 113th Congress and energy companies with Ian Nathan, Manager of Global Gas and LNG at Energy Intelligence Research & Advisory, a consultancy and publisher. Keep reading →

 /  Published January 10, 2013 at 3:00 PM
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