I told you two years ago when the Democrats took over they would be ruining the economy on purpose. And here it is a tax hike on American oil companies to run up the price of gas. Watch the way it gets spun. There will be little mention of that fact that the tax hike is the direct cause of the higher prices. The idea is to get the idiot on the street to believe that the republicans caused them to have to pay more. But here is the real kicker the bill was written so that the tax hike would not effect communist dictator and friend of the Democrats Hugo Chaves.
So what you are saying is that the U.S oil companies might have some trouble paying the tax and will pass it on to consumers. Well maybe Exxon Mobil might be able to handle its share of the tax burden. http://ca.wrs.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0oGk5...n.profits.ap/index.html?eref=edition_business HOUSTON (AP) -- Exxon Mobil Corp. on Friday posted the largest annual profit by a U.S. company -- $40.6 billion -- as the world's largest publicly traded oil company benefited from historic crude prices at year's end. Exxon Mobil, boosted by oil prices that have risen more than 50 percent in a year, posted record annual profits today of $40 billion. Exxon also set a U.S. record for the biggest quarterly profit, posting net income of $11.7 billion for the final three months of 2007, besting its own mark of $10.71 billion in the fourth quarter of 2005. The previous record for annual profit was $39.5 billion, which Exxon Mobil reported for 2006. The eye-popping results weren't a surprise given record prices for a barrel of oil at the end of 2007. For much of the fourth quarter, they hovered around $90 a barrel, more than 50 percent higher than a year ago. Crude prices reached an all-time trading high of $100.09 on Jan. 3 but have fallen about 10 percent since. The record profit for the October-December period amounted to $2.13 a share versus $1.76 a share in 2006. Year-ago net income was $10.25 billion. Also extraordinary was Exxon Mobil's revenue, which rose 30 percent in the fourth quarter to $116.6 billion from $90 billion a year ago. For the year, sales rose to $404.5 billion -- the most ever for the Irving, Texas-based company -- from the $377.64 billion it posted in 2006. In a statement, Exxon Mobil Chairman Rex Tillerson said the company continued to meet the world's energy needs through its "globally diverse resource base." "Our long-term investment program, in projects often far from major consuming nations, continued to provide resources essential to the increasingly interdependent global energy supply network," Tillerson said. Exxon Mobil produces about 3 percent of the world's oil. Its shares fell 37 cents to $86.03 in morning trading after rising as high as $87.86 earlier in the session. Higher commodity prices in the quarter were clearly evident from earnings at Exxon Mobil's exploration and production arm, known as the upstream. Income rose 32 percent to $8.2 billion from $6.2 billion a year ago. On an oil-equivalent basis, production increased nearly 1 percent from the fourth quarter of 2006. Excluding the expropriation of its Venezuelan assets last year, divestments and other factors, production rose nearly 3 percent. Refining and marketing, or downstream, earnings were $2.3 billion, up from nearly 2 billion in the year-ago quarter, as improved refining operations offset lower U.S. refining margins. In the U.S., downstream earnings were off sharply from a year ago -- $622 million in the most-recent quarter versus $945 million in 2006. Refining margins -- the difference between the cost of crude and what the company makes on refined products such as gasoline -- have been squeezed in recent months as spiking oil prices outpaced increases in gasoline prices and other refined products. Already, ConocoPhillips has said record oil prices at the end of 2007 helped it post a 37 percent increase in fourth-quarter profit, even as it produced less crude and natural gas than a year earlier. Its fourth-quarter net income rose to $4.37 billion versus $3.2 billion a year earlier. ConocoPhillips is the nation's third-largest integrated oil company behind Exxon Mobil and Chevron Corp. Chevron reported separately Friday its profit rose 29.2 percent in the fourth quarter, as surging prices for crude oil offset weak results from its refining business. It earned $4.88 billion, or $2.32 per share, from $3.77 billion, or $1.74 per share, a year earlier. Revenue rose 29 percent to $61.41 billion from $47.75 billion. On Thursday, Royal Dutch Shell PLC, Europe's largest oil company, reported fourth-quarter profit rose 60 percent to $8.47 billion on asset sales and higher oil prices. What's more, the Anglo-Dutch company said full-year net profit was a company record $31.3 billion, up 23 percent from the prior year.
What does all that mean? How much money does the banking industry make? What are the top 10 most profitable industries in the U.S.?
The investment banking industry achieved record profits of $65 billion in 2005, up 19 percent from 2004. The industry fired on all cylinders to achieve these results, The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) found in its quarterly report for the investment banking industry. For instance, in 2004 Exxon Mobil earned more money -- $25.33 billion -- than any other company on the Fortune 500 list of largest corporations. But by another measure of profitability, gross profit margin, it ranked No. 127. The simple fact is that drug companies make nearly 18 cents on each dollar sold (banks are number one with about 19 cents). The oil companies, whom everyone was upset at their profits, make only 9 cents on the dollar, a tad above the 8 cents on the dollar that is considered average for most companies. Yet way too many people want to make the drug companies even more profitable by giving them billions of dollars to do research they could afford to do themselves. It is simple corporate welfare. The liberals make it look like the Republicans are friends of big industry, while they themselves also are, just different, far more profitable industries. If you are feeling a bit manipulated by the socialist democrat propaganda machine well I can understand that. They have actually managed to manipulate you into thinking something that simply is not true all to advance their own personal agenda. Now that the truth has come to light let's get back to the point. Do you really think that America should be subsidizing a Communist dictator’s oil company while punishing our American oil companies?
But unrivaled returns on equity. However, profit margins across industries vary greatly based not on how well each business is doing but how capital- or labor-intensive it is. Oil is among the most capital-intensive. But look at the oil industry's profits compared with shareholder equity it has available for investment. The U.S. Energy Information Administration's most recent analysis of the oil industry's performance, released just last month, showed oil industry return on equity of 27 percent—about 10 points higher than that of other manufacturers. And it has been higher throughout this recent era of high world oil prices, just as it was back during the oil shock that hit in 1980. Enough windfall to tax? That year was the last time a windfall profits tax was enacted, and there's no question that the oil industry's results will focus political attention on the idea again, especially with economic concerns at the forefront and the expensive challenge of addressing climate change on the horizon. (Hillary Clinton talks windfall profits tax; Barack Obama says repeal the tax breaks oil already enjoys.) The Congressional Research Service found the last oil windfall tax generated only $80 billion in revenue before it was repealed in 1988, far less than the $393 billion projected. That may have been, of course, because of numerous loopholes in the way Congress wrote, and then later amended, the law. Domestic oil production fell and foreign oil dependence grew during the windfall tax years, but—given the hard reality that the United States doesn't have as much oil as the Middle East—those trends have continued unabated since then without any help of a windfall profits tax. That's why new ideas are floating for structuring a tax, such as exempting investments that the oil industry makes in non-fossil-fuel alternatives. For now, there's simply no alternative that replaces more than a sip of the world's voracious demand for petroleum. And as long as that is the case, the companies that provide it will be pumping out profits.
Exxon didnt raise the price of a barrel of oil, they just have a low overhead niche they fill. OPEC raises the prices, Exxon just benefits because the value of what they produce goes through the roof. The profit is also relative to the value of the dollar. You think 40billion today is better than 10Billion in 1980?
I wasn't trying to say that Exxon raised the price of oil.It was meant to show that these companies can afford to pay a little tax and still show a profit ,instead of putting it on the backs of the consumers, because whether there is a government tax in place or not these greedy corporations will continue to reap the rewards for turmoil and unrest in the rest of the world off the backs of ordinary people. So where does it end? Do we put the tax burden fully on the working class who cannot afford to drive to work now because of the price of oil in order to keep the war on terror fueled or put some of the burden on the corporations that are benefitting from the U.S. enormous consumption rate to fuel the military? All I know is that my oil bill has tripled in the past 8 yrs and the cost of everything I buy has increased accordingly,yet my "profit" at the end of the year has not increased.I guess that is ok though because it is not the average joe that keeps the economy running it is huge companies that do that with their tax breaks and threats to move jobs to other countries because they feel unfairly treated when someone says they should pay their share. As far as the banking and drug companies,they are no better but this was about the oil industry. I'm not completely anti-business but I think that at the end of the day if I have some extra money in my pocket instead of putting it in my gas tank I would be able to spend it on more things that in turn would help grow the economy instead of watching it go out my tailpipe.
Actually the higher price lowers their margin of profit but yes increases their advertised revenues. The money goes to oil suppliers not oil refiners. It's as if I were buying blank generic widgets at 1.00 each and painting them custom colors at .75 expense to myself and sell them for 2.00 (profit margin of 12.5%) But let’s say the widget suppliers charge 2.00 for the widgets and my customization costs are the same. IF the market will tolerate my selling widgets for 3.00 then for me nothing would change really but my revenue changed drastically selling the same amount of Widgets at a higher cost. That does not go into my pocket though. Also if I sold say 15% less widgets then I would have higher revenue still but less money in my pocket due to a lower margin of profit and less sales.
Oh and Homer at the end of the day you will have less money because the price of gas WILL increase. Also that tax revenue taken from the Oil companies and YOU at the pump. Will be redistributed much of it to subsidize Hugo Chavez’s Communist regime. Fund a failed socialized medicine system. And to pay people to drop out of a society of self dependence and become wards of the government.
