… Well they are trying to, anyway. It still has to be approved by the house. This is from the state with the highest per capita budgets in the country and the highest per capita spending on its estimated ~700,000 population. All corporate taxes are passed onto consumers who provide the revenues for businesses to operate. So any increase in operating costs transfer to the pump price and the price of other petroleum products.
Alaska Senate Approves New Profits Tax
"The intent of the tax is to increase the state's share of profits when the price of oil is high. At today's oil prices, state economists estimate the tax would raise $1.2 billion or more next year above what Alaska collect now."
Interestingly, there were a few "no" votes against this bill. I bet you can't guess why! Because they thought the tax was TOO LOW!!!
"The "no" votes came from Senate Democrats worried the proposed tax rate is too low and that oil companies will be able to manipulate their deductible costs to reduce their tax burden."
So at a time when gas prices are rising (due to a falling dollar) and at a time when the major profiteer in the gasoline game is already government, the State of Alaska wants to raise the costs to fill up, not just for its own population, but for the entire country. How nice. At a spending level of almost $12,000 per person, they should be focusing on ways to reduce government spending, not raising the cost of doing business.
And before you moonbats out there who don't understand how markets work, start whining about oil company profits, you need to look at two very important issues…
1.) Oil company profits on a gallon a gasoline run between 7-10 cents per gallon with the average just about 9 cents. Government taxes on that same gallon of gasoline run 59 cents per gallon, and are continuing to rise.
2.) Most of the recent rise in oil and gasoline costs are because of a declining dollar. Priced in gold and silver (read, inflation adjusted dollars), the cost of gasoline has been declining for awhile, though global strains (read supply/demand issues) may reverse that. A big reason for the dollar decline is OUT-OF-CONTROL GOVERNMENT SPENDING!
Treasury Secretary Snow (and the Bush adminstration) is talking out of both sides of his mouth when he tells you on the one hand that China needs to revalue its currency to allow it to gain against the Dollar, resulting in a weaker Dollar, and then turns around tells you that the Treasury Department (and the Administration) support a strong Dollar policy. Their excuses for this are that a falling Dollar will improve trade figures abroad and thereby lower trade deficits. What they don't tell you is that the markets react to such things and reprice on-the-fly. The other thing they don't tell you is that import prices go up at the same time, so everything we buy that is imported (including oil and gas) go up on the home front. And they go up faster than wages, so the plight of the American family is to try to get the same goods with less money.
Good luck with that.
"Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread."
– Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography, 1821
