pcray1231 wrote:
Yes, they pay normal corporate taxes.
And they pay taxes in addition to that. It's called an "impact fee". They set it up like that because most of the impacts are local, and for the most part, the local authorities get the revenue from the impact fee, whereas the state general fund would get an "extraction tax". It's on a per well basis.
Personally, I will not vote for any politician who would implement an extraction tax. I consider it a MAJOR problem.
The idea of them paying ANY extra tax is due to any environmental damage they may cause as well as the costs associated with supporting them. Roads and bridges, handling traffic, more DEP and DCNR inspectors, permit issuing, local sewage facilities, zoning issues, etc. I get that and support it.
But the idea of an impact fee is to actually pay for that kind of stuff. To fix the ills that the companies cause that go above and beyond what normal corporate taxes support. But an extraction fee is something different. The justification is largely the same, but ONLY reason for setting it up like that is so that they can use the extra money for something unrelated, like funding a school in another part of the state, and NOT FIXING THE PROBLEM THAT JUSTIFIES THE TAX.
It'd be like if in the coal mining days, the companies paid to clean up AMD (which would have been good), but the politicians didn't actually use it to clean up the AMD, and instead funded something else.
It really p&#$$#@ me off that they somehow hoodwinked those with environmental concerns into this "extraction tax" position, which would allow environmentally justified money to go towards non-environmental causes.
If the impact fee needs to be raised, or distributed differently to fully capture the costs, then lets talk. I'm on board. But lets keep any extra taxes the gas companies pay earmarked to combat problems that gas companies cause. For non-related stuff, the gas companies should pay what any other business pays as part of the standard business taxes, and they do.
