http://biggovernment.com/category/big-labor/

To Attack Energy Companies
by Capitol Confidential

Earlier this month, The New York Times ran a front page article that claimed, “an examination of the American tax code indicates that oil production is among the most heavily subsidized businesses, with tax breaks available at virtually every stage of the exploration and extraction process.” The thesis of the article was that oil companies are the benefactors of enormous subsides, primarily through complicated maneuvering of offshore assets, “tax breaks,” and “loopholes.”

acorn

Unfortunately, the copy of the American tax code that The Times used to conduct their careful analysis appears to have been heavily edited by a cadre of left leaning groups, including ACORN President Maude Hurd, Citizens for Tax Justice, Center for American Progress and the Clean Energy Works campaign.

The smoking gun comes in the form of a leaked memo from CEW communications advisor and former Democratic congressional staffer David Di Martino just days after The New York Times ran it’s wildly misguided assessment of U.S. tax policy.

In the memo, Di Martino outlines a strategy to change America’s perception of increased taxes on energy producers as a tax on consumers by arguing “the American people already have a national energy tax — The Big Oil Welfare Tax — in the form of billions of dollars in subsidies to the wildly profitable big oil companies.” The same day that Di Martino released his memo, Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ) released their own defective and dishonest hit piece, titled “What Oil and Gas Companies Extract from the American Public.” The tax breaks referred to by Di Martino and the CTJ memo, in reality, are the same credits that every American company receives for taxes paid overseas to foreign governments on income earned abroad.

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