When people are confident enough about their righteousness to make a public display of it, should they not also be right?
Maybe, in view of the intellectual cover activists nowadays receive from the White House, that’s too much to ask.
Protestors made spectacles of themselves Mar. 7 at the IHS CERA Week convention in Houston.
Outside a hotel ballroom where sessions were about to start, 30 or so demonstrators created a brief commotion with chants and banners. Two males in the group jumped up and down wearing look-at-me hats. A larger group protested outside.
Meeting attendees who noticed chuckled and went about their business. Police officers peacefully herded the protesters back into obscurity.
In both locations, the activists directed this message at oil and gas company representatives: “Pay your taxes.”
The implication is that oil and gas companies do not pay their taxes. It aligns with President Barack Obama’s allegation that taxpayers give oil and gas companies $4 billion/year in subsidies.
Both assertions are demonstrably incorrect.
The American Petroleum Institute reports Compustat North America data showing oil and gas companies pay income taxes at an effective rate of 41.1%. For industrial companies excluding oil and gas companies, the effective rate is 26.5%.
Activist groups dispute API’s numbers, saying they include taxes paid to local, state, and foreign governments. Well, of course they include those taxes, which are deductible from income taxed at the federal level. They’re taxes paid by companies with far-flung activities.
To focus on federal income tax and conclude the industry pays too little is deceitful.
Logically, that charge is akin to Obama’s misrepresentation of tax code mechanisms by which extractive industries recover costs as “subsidies” and calling for their end.
When the President takes liberties with facts about oil and gas taxation, why wouldn’t people eager to jump up and down in crowds wearing funny hats feel encouraged to do likewise?
When little about the message is right, though, activist righteousness looks especially wrong.
(Online Mar. 9, 2012; author’s e-mail: [email protected])