This past quarter, ExxonMobil's "fat profit" is anything but – about 8.5 cents per dollar of sales. But the company DID pay a fat tax bill. Actually, customers paid that bill.
On a worldwide basis, in the 2nd 2008 quarter, ExxonMobil paid over $10 billion in corporate income taxes in the second quarter alone, $9.5 billion in sales taxes, and over $12 billion in other taxes.
In other words, ExxonMobil paid (or at least collected) $32.361 billion in taxes in the second quarter. Or to look at it another way - Exxon paid (or collected) almost $3 in taxes ($32.361 billion) for every $1 in profits ($11.68 billion).
That means that for every dollar in Exxon sales – not profits, SALES -- 23.4 cents is for taxes. And that is averaged over all types of sales – not just gasoline.
If the government chooses to nationalize Exxon (and the other oil companies) and take all their profit (reducing the stocks to zero value -- devastating pension funds nationwide), and if we make the outlandish assumption that a government oil company will run as efficiently as Exxon runs now, the price of $4 gas would drop all of 34 cents a gallon. Meantime, government taxes exceed 94 cents a gallon.
For those who wish to verify Exxon taxes, here's a URL for the company's quarterly earnings statement:
http://tinyurl.com/5rnmyc
