As noted in today’s Globe article on Palin’s economic record:
The oil companies pay a royalty [to the state of Alaska] of 12.5 percent on oil as it is extracted, plus property and corporate income taxes, but the biggest bite is a tax on net profits of between 25 and 50 percent, escalating with the market price of oil.
This isn’t — as Fred Thompson might say — taking oil out of your side of the barrel, just the other side of the barrel. All fifty states are feeling the pain of high oil prices, but it’s only the Alaskans who benefit from the profit-based tax on the oil businesses. The revenue from the tax was so high that Governor Palin is dishing out $1200 surplus checks to every Alaskan, on top of $2069. Oh, and she’s suspended the eight-cents-a-gallon gas tax. (Here in the Commonwealth, we pay twenty-one cents on a gallon of gas.)
