Ploy to Rename PA Severance Tax as “Gross Receipts” Tax

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tax revenueDemocrats just love to help themselves to OPM--other people's money. They have a spending habit the equivalent of a crack junkie. Ever notice how junkies use very creative ways to try and feed the habit? One of their favorite tactics is to euphemize--call the same thing by a different name. In Pennsylvania, big-spending Dems in the legislature, along with their big-spending governor, Tom Wolf, are at it again. A severance tax is a tax on natural gas as it comes out of the ground--"at the wellhead." You measure what comes out and you tax it. Another way to tax the same thing is called a "gross receipts tax"--which taxes the value the gas was sold for. In essence, a gross receipts tax is a sales tax. The price of the underlying good being sold goes up--so does the tax (it's a percentage of the sales price). At the end of the day, a tax is a tax is a tax. You can call it a severance tax, or you can call it a gross receipts tax--it's the same thing: a tax. Because Dems have short-term memory issues, we'll remind the Dems reading this that Marcellus gas is ALREADY TAXED--by two different taxes: an impact fee and corporate income tax (on profits). PA is already paying the equivalent of a very healthy severance (or gross receipts) tax. But all the Dems can see are big dollar signs--that a gross receipts tax could raise $500 million per year or more--to feed their enormous big spending habit...

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