Tax Day: No More of Our Tax Dollars to Corporate Polluters
While you have probably face tax day with a bit of dread, large corporations take it easy. In fact, the Government Accountability Office found that two-thirds of U.S. corporations paid no income tax between 1998 and 2005. Corporations benefit from billions in tax giveways every year. A Friends of the Earth analysis found that the oil and gas industry was slated to receive $32.9 billion in tax giveaways and other federal subsidies over five years.
These giveaways are how Exxon Mobil, the most profitable company in the world, reported a record $45.2 billion profit last year, but paid zero dollars to the IRS.
Oil and gas production isn’t the only polluting activity that provides corporations with windfalls from your tax dollars. The corporate giants — including big oil — that sell dirty corn ethanol, received $5 billion in 2009 from just one of many ethanol tax breaks. Corn ethanol causes even more global warming pollution than conventional gasoline, as well as harmful fertilizer and pesticide runoff. It is not something we should be subsidizing. But according to a recent Friends of the Earth study, if these giveaways to dirty ethanol continue, taxpayers like you and me will have funded the biofuels industry to the tune of $400 billion by the year 2022.
Unfortunately, much of the public has no idea that these massive, pollution-promoting giveaways exist. At a time of ballooning national deficits, we are wasting billions on corporations that use our own money to pollute the earth. This pollution causes health and ecosystem repercussions that are expensive and extensive.
Our representatives in Congress ought to spend our money wisely and invest in clean energy that is in the public interest — not waste our money on polluter lobbyists’ pet projects.
Help us send them that message through the media.
Watch the movie that we put together about Tax Day and subsidies:
Friends of the Earth reports on dirty energy subsidies:
Friends of the Earth analysis of subsidies to Big Oil Companies
Friends of the Earth report on biofuels subsidies
Total Subsidies for the Biofuels Industry
