Dr. Billy Bob "Hoot" Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Petroleum Products
By Jim Dallas
Everytime you see those gasoline prices go up, remember that the State of Texas collects a 4.6 percent severance tax on the value of crude oil.
Although the tax has some exemptions, the increase in revenue has tracked oil prices fairly well. Given the increase in prices, the crude oil severance tax and a similar natural gas tax should have banner years when the numbers are crunched (in FY2004, the two taxes brought in about $2 billion, and accounted for about 3 percent of state revenues).
It'd be nice to see some of this new money (you know, a few hundred million can go a long way) go into education, or at least be used to ameliorate the embarassment of future school finance "reform" specials. In this sense, every Texan can share in the joy of ripping off the rest of our chronically-oil addicted country (we should have changed our state motto from "Friendship" to "screw you, pay me" a long time ago, back during the Railroad Commission/Interstate Oil Compact days, but that is another story.)
Posted by Jim Dallas at October 3, 2005 01:33 AM
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