“Energy tax preferences represent governmental intervention in markets; they are designed to direct private investment away from some activities to activities favored by the tax preference(s).”
” … tax preferences represent the government’s attempt to take resources from some parties in the energy sector and reallocate them to other parties in the energy sector.”
” … the best remedy for excessive corporate income tax burdens is a direct reform of the corporate income tax. Targeted tax preferences to moderate industry tax burdens are a poor way to address the problem.”
– Jerry Taylor and Peter Van Doren, Letter to Energy Energy Tax Reform Working Group, House Ways and Means Committee [chair: Kevin Brady (R-Texas)], April 15, 2013.
Several years ago, Jerry Taylor and Peter Van Doren of the Cato Institute wrote a tax policy missive to the Energy Tax Reform Working Group of the House Ways and Means Committee.
“After 25-years of subsidy-driven financing of renewable energy, Main Street Americans are now taxed billions annually so the richest Wall Street bankers and corporations can avoid their tax burden by funneling money to big wind development.”
“We support the House provision to remove the PTC inflation adjustment. Retaining the 2.4¢/kwh subsidy in light of lower installation costs and increased production confers a bounty on big wind that far exceeds what 1992 lawmakers could ever have envisioned.”
– Linowes letter to lawmakers (below)
With the Energy Policy Act of 1992, a substantial tax credit has gone wind’s way. A quarter-century and many extensions later, this gravy train is at risk of being partly derailed.
It’s about time.
While conferees will reconcile the House and Senate versions of the tax bill this week, it appears that a haircut will happen to industrial wind power via the Production Tax Credit (reduced amount, stricter calculation).…
“Why bad news and bad news only? Don’t the very reporters and staffers at InsideClimate News want to add optimism to their professional lives? Or is climate alarmism just a day job, a 9-to-5 gig, after which the real world comes into focus?”
“What would happen if some intrepid reporter or story gatherer broke the mold and reported on global lukewarming or on the benefits of CO2? What would his or her boss say? What would the head of fundraising say? What would the donors say?”
I read InsideClimate News (ICN) daily. And I am perplexed to see a nonprofit writing/information organization claiming the mantle of “clear,” “objective,” “independent,” and “non-partisan” dish up 100% climate alarmism and ad hominem argument against critics of the same. One would think that voluntary transactions between consenting adults, the ebb and flow of science, and skepticism against intellectual and political elites would be enough to investigate such topics as: