From USA TODAY:
…In the most obvious example: Pennsylvania and New York have no severance tax on oil and gas…
By contrast, all veteran energy states tax their energy resources heavily and use the money to keep other taxes low. Texas charges a 7.5% severance tax on natural gas and has no income tax. Oklahoma charges 7.1%. Alaska charges 25% to 50%. It has no sales or income tax, writes checks to residents every October ($1,174 per person last year) and has stashed away $41 billion for the future by taxing energy. North Dakota, now enjoying a shale oil boom, charges 5% to 6.5%. Among the new boom states, only West Virginia has a substantial tax — an old natural resources levy, a little above 5%, that applies to oil, gas and coal…
The problem: The old industrial states have tax laws that date as far back as the 1930s. Legislators then taxed what they knew: land, machines, coal, hourly income. Pennsylvania’s property tax applies to coal reserves but never mentions oil or gas. In local income taxes, workers’ wages are generally taxed, but the royalties landowners receive for allowing drilling on their property are not. “The conversation is just beginning on how to tax shale,” says David Davare, research director of the Pennsylvania School Board Association. “We’ll figure it out.”…
Click here to read the full article.
EDITOR: Bull… Gov. Tom Corbett reportedly receive a million dollars in campaign contributions from Marcellus Shale interests. He was bought and paid for… the public be damned! Given his give away of gas revenue plus his disgraceful neglectas attorney general and then cover up of the Sandusky scandal, if the Pennsylvania Constitution allowed recall, he might soon be out of office.
