57% of Pennsylvania’s CPAs Favor a Marcellus Tax – Surprised?
Each year the Pennsylvania Institute of Certified Public Accountants (PICPA) conducts a poll of its membership. Last year PA accounts answered the question “How should PA close the state budget gap?” by indicating the state should privatize liquor sales – 69%, by instituting a Marcellus Shale severance tax – 67%, and by legalizing pot smoking – 27% (see PA Accountants Love Marcellus Severance Tax (and Smoking Pot)). This year’s PICPA poll results have just been published. Perhaps it was our criticism and poking fun at the absurdity of the question last year–but this year the question changed. This is the question they asked this year of PA accountants: “Pennsylvania faces a structural budget deficit estimated at nearly $2 billion. Which of the following should the state use to close the deficit?” The #1 preferred solution for PA’s accountants? A Marcellus Shale severance tax–57% favor it. As we said last year, does anyone else find it suspicious that the people who would have to manage and file reams of tax forms on a severance tax (generating lots of billable hours) are in favor of such a tax? Can anyone say, conflict of interest? Why do we care a wit about what CPAs think about taxes and budget deficits? They’re the ones who helped create it!…
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Thank you for an awesome 2015 at the Marcellus Drilling News blog/news site. You, our dear readers, made it a terrific year. Truth to tell we lost a few subscribers overall in 2015 due to the severe downturn in the drilling marketplace. Some people who work in the industry lost their jobs and did not re-subscribe. Some landowners moved away or otherwise gave up hope that they will see drilling any time soon. But you know, we can’t complain. Many (many!) of you hung in there with MDN for another year. Editor Jim Willis pledges that 2016 will see some much-needed improvements with the design of the site, essentially unchanged since we began it in 2009, and with new product offerings. Stay tuned! In the meantime, we’d like to reflect back on 2015. Everyone else, it seems, has run a “top 10” article list for 2015, so why don’t we? Below are the top 10 most-read stories of 2015 on the MDN web site. But first, a few raw numbers. In 2015 the MDN site received 785,120 “user sessions” (or visits) made by 388,239 different, unique people. Those people viewed 1,496,910 pages on the site, almost all of those pages being articles. Not too shabby if you ask us–that a niche publication like MDN garners more than one-third of a million people viewing 1.5 million pages of content. We know of large circulation magazines that would kill for those numbers! Now, on to the top 10 articles those one-third of a million people viewed the most…