PA House Speaker Turzai Nukes Wolf’s Severance Tax Proposal

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Speaker of the PA House, Mike Turzai – credit: Wikipedia

A few weeks ago Secretary of the Pennsylvania Dept. of Community and Economic Development (DCED), Dennis Davin, wrote an embarrassing editorial published in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (see Once Again Wolf Pushes DCED Sec. to Support Severance Tax). Davin knows that a high severance tax will drive Marcellus drillers out of the state–but (we conclude) he wants to keep his job for another four years, so he goes out as the spear-catcher for his boss, lefty Gov. Tom Wolf. PA House Speaker Mike Turzai is an impressive guy. He’s always stood, steadfast, with the Marcellus industry, against Wolf’s insane plan to tax the industry out of existence. Turzai sent the Post-Gazette a column of his own, to counter the inanities of Davin’s column–and wonder of wonders, they published it! Turzai does a masterful job with his response to Davin. Our favorite part is where Turzai obliterate’s Davin’s claims about the “minimal” revenue raised by PA’s impact fee. In PA, instead of a severance tax, the legislature passed an impact fee (i.e., tax) in 2012, which has raised far more than the severance tax in neighboring states. For example, in 2017, Ohio raised $36.7 million via its severance tax. In 2017, West Virginia raised $69 million from its severance tax. In 2017, PA raised a whopping $173.3 million from its impact fee. Tell us again, Mr. Davin, about the “superiority” of a severance tax!…

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