How Evil is Exxon-Mobil?
| August 01, 2008
Some politician (I am supposed to know his name, but this is a stock blog and not politico.com) immediately pounced on Evil Exxon-Mobil's (XOM) $11.68 billion in profits, and deemed that they needed to be taxed to the fullest extent. So, I had to investigate.
This is what I found. Exxon-Mobil had a pre-tax income of $22.2 billion. They paid $10.5 billion in taxes on the pre-tax income - for after tax profits of 11.7 billion. Yes, $11.7 billion is a lot of money. So, I dug in further. What about sales based taxes ? They paid $9.5 billion (in addition to the $10.5 billion on income). What about excise taxes? They paid $12.3 billion in excise taxes. In total, the $11.68 billion was 8.5% of their revenues of $138 billion for the quarter. Nice numbers, but let's see - the tax man got $10.5+12.3+9.5 = $32.3 billion.
Since I am not rich (enough) yet, I want to eat the rich too - yeah, tax the SOBs.
But in the case of Exxon-Mobil, that would be tantamount to killing the goose that laid the golden egg. Flog the goose dear politician - do not kill it please. Not yet. You might think you don't need them, but $32.3 billion says you do.
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