Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Basic Civics on the Windfall Profit Tax

Why oh why are such monumentally stupid people able to congregate in one place and make decisions that have a negative effect on me? Congress is still beating the drum on the thrice damned Windfall Profits Tax for Big Scary Oil. Please click to read the rest of the story.

Thrice Damned.

The first damning is that more taxes already tax an overly bloated system. More auditors, more paperwork, more man-hours, more of everything will be demanded. And, lest you think this is only on the private sector, it's not. The .gov will have to add folks to the rolls to administer the program. They will also have to draft more rules and regs to add to the 67,000 (give or take) pages of the tax code.

The second damning is that this sets a bad precedent following the previous bad precedent. But each bad precedent allows the government to intrude further into our lives and into business. Instead of a hands off .gov we get a bigger brother. The last WPT failed miserably. Yet, the taxmeisters just cannot learn from history can they?

The thrice damning is (drum roll please) CORPORATIONS DON'T PAY TAXES, THE PEOPLE DO!! Boy I hope someone got that. Taxes, like payroll, like machinery, like paper clips, etc etc are a cost of doing business. These costs get all rolled up and figured into the final sale price that you and I pay. So, if and when the dunderheads in the House finally get passage of the WPT, look for gas prices to go up even more.

And as a bonus damning: Your 401K or Money Market stuff has a great chance of being partially invested into oil stocks.

Question for the day. If Congress can punish the oil companies for "excess profits" and grill the CEO's regarding thier own compensation, why can't we return the favor? Look up Feinstein, Boxer, and Pelosi on google with the terms "net worth". I'd say they need to trim some of their excess profits. They can mail me a check anyday now.

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