Taxation

More details continue to come out about PA Gov. Tom Wolf’s Marcellus-killing severance tax. For example, did you know that towns and counties that previously received money from the impact fee will continue to get money under this tax–but that the amount they get will be capped? Under the existing impact fee the more drilling in an area the more money that area receives to compensate for the drilling (roads that need repairing, beefing up first responders, etc.). No more. Under Wolf’s plan, there is an upper limit on how much money he’s willing to give those locations that actually see drilling. The rest, you see, must go to pay off campaign debts to teachers unions. Another fatal flaw in Wolf’s severance tax: He calculates the tax based on $2.97 per thousand cubic feet sale price, regardless of what the actual sale price is. Do you know what the sale price for natural gas at the Leidy hub was on March 13th? It was $1.435/Mcf–about half of what Wolf is using as the standard rate. That means the effective tax rate for drillers selling gas for $1.435 is twice what it is for drillers selling at Wolf’s magical $2.97. What do you think drillers in northeast PA (near the Leidy hub) will do? That’s right. Shut in their wells and lay down their rigs…
Read More “Important & Overlooked Details on PA Gov Wolf’s Severance Tax”

Louis D. D’Amico, President & Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Independent Oil & Gas Association (PIOGA), is leading the effort to defeat PA Gov. Tom Wolf’s Marcellus-killing, 7.5% severance tax. While virtually everyone else looked away in embarrassment and otherwise ignored Wolf’s threat that you either take this tax like a man or you’ll get banned “like New York,” Lou D’Amico is not looking away and not pretending Wolf never said it. Wolf did say it and he meant it–and he must be stopped. Below is an excellent column Lou recently wrote in which he parses the governor’s comments and offers the industry’s response–setting the record straight. By the way, Lou will be the Guest of Honor at this year’s Oil & Gas Awards event in Pittsburgh on March 25…
Read More “PIOGA Leads the Charge to Defeat Wolf’s Severance Tax”

Have you ever played Jenga? You know, the game where you stack blocks of wood in mini-skyscraper style and then each player must remove a block from a lower level and stack it on the top until somebody pulls a block out and the whole thing comes crashing down. That’s the comparison used to describe the state budget recently proposed by PA Gov. Tom Wolf in none other than the reliably liberal, Democrat-supporting, anti-drilling Allentown Morning Call. As the Morning Call points out, Wolf has built his Jenga (house of cards) budget on soaking drillers with a new severance tax. When that doesn’t happen, the whole budget comes tumbling down and no one will be to blame except Tom Wolf himself…
Read More “Jenga! PA Gov Wolf’s Budget Built on Severance Tax Will Crash”

Using the same class warfare language all Democrats resort to when they want to justify their enormous appetite for taxing and spending, yesterday Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf introduced the highest-ever budget in PA and attempted to lay a huge theft, in the form of a so-called severance tax, on the Marcellus industry by saying, “We deserve to be fairly compensated for the use of our resources.” Just one problem Tom: IT’S NOT YOUR RESOURCES! The resources in question belong to private landowners and your proposal to steal their money, along with the money of the drillers who risk a lot of capital to drill, is abhorrent. The justification is that the money stolen will be given “to the children”–by which he means given to teachers’ unions who turned out the vote for him. The Wolf budget landed yesterday–with a thud–and it calls for $1 billion in taxes on the Marcellus industry. Wolf thinks he can get buy-in by ensuring $225 million of that amount will be kept local, like the old “impact fee.” That’s the payoff to try and get support for this Marcellus-killing budget. He plans to fork over the rest of it to Big Education as their reward for voting for him. Even the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette calls his budget “a miss” and “utter folly.” Can you believe that? It’s so bad even the anti-drilling editors at the Post-Gazette don’t like it…
Read More “Post-Gazette: Wolf Budget with Severance Tax “a Miss…Utter Folly””

In all of the coverage of PA Gov. Wolf’s ill-fated budget–the highest ever for the state of Pennsylvania–we spotted one comment that validates what we’ve been saying for more than two years: The Act 13 “impact fee” is really just a tax. In fairness, it’s 60% fee and 40% tax because 60% of it stays in the communities where drilling happens to reimburse them for things like improving roads, extra law enforcement personnel and beefing up local fire departments. The 40% portion disappears into the black hole of Harrisburg–into greasy politicians’ fingers. In February 2012 MDN pointed out the so-called impact fee is really just a tax (see PA’s New Tax on Drilling (er Sorry, Impact Fee)). The chief architect of the impact fee, State Sen. Joe Scarnati (Republican from Jefferson) finally admitted it yesterday. He blamed Gov. Tom Corbett for not wanting to call the impact fee what it really is–a tax–and he said so to the Philadelphia Inquirer…
Read More “Sen. Joe Scarnati Admits Impact Fee is Really a Tax”

It’s not an understatement to say that drillers in Pennsylvania are in a fight for their very existence. Socialist Gov. Tom Wolf has convinced a great many PA residents in the state that it’s perfectly fine to steal money from drillers and landowners and redistribute it to Big Education. What Wolf and those who blindly follow him don’t realize is that Wolf’s nosebleed severance tax is the equivalent of a butcher knife to the neck of the goose laying Marcellus golden eggs–those eggs being jobs and current tax revenue. If Wolf & company pull the trigger on the tax, it will be catastrophic for the drilling industry in the state. Drilling is already decreasing–by huge numbers. Capital budgets for 2015 have been slashed–typically in one-third to one-half of 2014 levels. New drilling may all but stop with such a new tax–denying the tax and spend Democrats the revenue they seek “for the children.” What will they do then? The Marcellus Shale Coalition is blowing the trumpet to warn people of the coming train wreck that is Tom Wolf’s severance tax. One of the ways they are doing it is with an emailed newsletter called Marcellus Moments. Yesterday’s edition contains an excellent table showing Marcellus drillers and how much they’ve announced they are cutting back on their capital budgets for 2015. When you see it table form (below), it’s rather shocking. Do the Dems really think drillers will just keep on drilling when their already-squeezed profits disappear into a socialist tax black hole? Although the Marcellus is the biggest, it’s not the only shale play around. Rigs can be moved…
Read More “Dramatic Budget Cutbacks in Marcellus Budgets for 2015”

It appears PA Gov. Tom Wolf’s severance tax proposal isn’t the slam dunk he thought it would be. Must be time to sneak in a supposedly “impartial study” that says raising taxes on drillers won’t hurt anybody–they ain’t goin’ nowhere ’cause that gas in under Pennsylvania soil. And right on cue the partisan so-called Pennsylvania Independent Fiscal Office (IFO)–populated with Democrats appointed by Ed Rendell and paid with taxpayer’s money–has issued a “research brief” which says the “effective tax rate” on PA drillers four years ago was 5.3%–but today it’s a measly 2.1% (robber barrons!). The new “brief” delights Gov. Wolf and the soak-the-drillers-we-hate-fossil-fuels-anyway Democrats in Harrisburg. This is not the first so-called research issued by the IFO calling for high taxes on drillers. They said the same thing last year–only last year’s report was longer (see PA Partisan Study Finds PA Needs to Soak Drillers with New Taxes). Here’s the latest pathetic attempt to build a case for stealing the money from one industry (oil & gas) to give it away to another (big education)…
Read More “PA’s “Independent” Fiscal Office Says Drillers Pay Low Taxes”

Charlie Schliebs is managing director of Stone Pier Capital Advisors in Pittsburgh–a boutique mergers & acquisitions (M&A) advisory firm that provides “highly sophisticated services to companies with enterprise values ranging from $5 million to over $50 million” according to their website. Charlie was on the PA Gov. Tom Wolf transition team for the Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) and said “it was a good experience.” Charlie is also, generally, a Tom Wolf fan. He likes the fact that Wolf isn’t a typical politician and was/is a successful businessman. Charlie supported Wolf in the last election. Charlie is also an MDN reader. You know we’re not Tom Wolf fans–in particular with respect to his severance tax proposal. In Stone Pier’s latest newsletter for friends and customers, Charlie writes an important cover story about Wolf and his severance tax proposal–and why he’s confused by it. We’re happy to bring it to you–it’s an important read…
Read More “Member of Wolf DEP Transition Team Confused by Severance Tax Plan”