This is my commentary on other people's stuff -- particularly blogs of people I know. Every post title should be a link to the blog I'm commenting about.

Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Comment on Alaskan budget

In response to this post at the Citizens:

Just in case you're curious, although I wasn't able to exactly match up the data from RbR's reference and US West's, it certainly seems (within a percentage point or so) that the tax breakdown corresponds to oil revenue this way:

Property tax (1.9%): this corresponds to the $65.6M paid entirely by the oil companies.
Select sales (6.4%): this corresponds to $218M paid (presumably) by consumers.
Corporate Income Tax (23.6%): this corresponds to $771.3M, of which 77% ($594.4M) is paid by oil companies.
Other (68.1%): this corresponds to $2,396.4M, of which 96% ($2,292.3M) is the production tax paid by oil companies.

I
should point out that the percentages don't match the numbers exactly,
and there's a little leftover taxes ($28.2M "Fish Tax", $16M
"Commercial Passenger Vessel Tax") that I didn't know how to
characterize. Together, these are less than 1.3% of Alaska's tax
revenue.

Summing up, that big "Other" chunk of the Alaskan tax
pie is almost entirely oil production tax. The purple Corporate Income
tax is mostly oil company taxes also.

Percentage of tax
revenue paid directly by oil companies is about 84%. Percentage of the
entire Alaskan budget paid directly by oil companies is about 43%, paid
by federal money is about 12%, and paid by interest on investments is
about 31%. About 10% is paid by Alaskan citizens in the form of select
sales taxes, fines, etc. The remaining bit (4%, though this is also
where the rounding error lives) is from other corporate sources, like
mining.

--------------

Palin's big triumph as governor
was getting a new oil and gas tax passed that increased the tax rate on
the oil companies. So, when you hear she "took on the oil companies",
this is what it's about. Strangely, the Republicans never describe it
as "raising taxes on businesses", which I'm pretty sure Fred Thompson
told me was equivalent to raising my taxes. Also, it increases unemployment and stifles the economy, I am led to believe.

If,
as RbR quoted, Palin said she "protected the tax payers", that demands
clarification. The tax payers in Alaska are clearly the oil companies,
and she's raised their taxes. I doubt they think that's protection. :)