TIMES-TRIBUNE: In defending the indefensible – his irrational refusal to establish a severance tax on Pennsylvania’s booming natural gas industry – Gov. Tom Corbett has invoked the Nirvana of all anti-tax conservatives, Texas.
Mr. Corbett contends that gas drillers won’t establish corporate operations here if the commonwealth imposes the same sort of severance taxes that every other gas-producing state levies.
Before he puts on his monogrammed ostrich-skin boots and saddles up the F-150, Mr. Corbett should consider that the Great State of Texas has long-standing severance taxes on oil and gas extraction. The rate on gas is 7.5 percent; on oil, 4.6 percent. The taxes sometimes have generated more than $2 billion a year in revenue for the state government. There has been no exodus of drilling companies from Houston to Harrisburg… (more)
