FOSSIL FUEL TAXATION IN THE PRESIDENT’S 2013 BUDGET
Andre J. Barbe, Department of Economics, Rice University, Phone: 1-504-258-2637, Email: ajb3@rice.edu
Overview
Each year, the president submits a budget to Congress which includes proposed changes to the US federal tax code.
The President’s fiscal year 2013 budget proposes to change the taxation of fossil fuel production in the United States
by increasing existing tax rates, reinstating expired taxes, and eliminating deductions for fossil fuel production. These
changes will increase taxes paid by fossil fuel producers by over $100 billion over the next ten years (Joint Committee
on Taxation 2012; Department of the Treasury 2012). The Department of the Treasury (2012) states that the proposed
changes would remove tax preferences that encourage more investment in fossil fuel production than would occur
under a neutral tax system.
In this paper we evaluate the proposed changes to the tax code. We do so by examining three questions: (1) Does
current law favor fossil fuel production? (2) Would this proposal make the tax code more efficient? (3) What effect
would this proposal have on fossil fuel production in particular and the economy in general?
To answer these questions, we first identify the changes proposed in the budget and compare them to both current law
and a neutral tax system. We then examine the overall tax treatment of fossil fuel production. In order to determine if
the tax increases on fossil fuel production will increase the neutrality of the tax code across industries, we first need
to determine how heavily the current tax code favors fossil fuel production. Since past literature shows a wide range
of estimated tax rates, we calculate our own measures of the effective tax rate for the sector using three different
specifications. Finally, we predict the effect of the proposal on fossil fuel production using a general equilibrium
model of the US economy.
Methods
In the first section, this paper examines the ten tax changes for fossil fuels contained in the proposed budget: (1)
increasing the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund financing rate, (2) repealing expensing of intangible drilling costs (IDCs),
(3) repealing percentage depletion, (4) repealing the domestic manufacturing deduction, (5) increasing the geological
and geophysical amortization period for independent producers, (6) repealing the capital gains treatment of coal
royalties, (7) repealing expensing of exploration and development costs for coal, (8) repealing the last-in, first-out
(LIFO) method of accounting for inventories, (9) reinstating the Superfund excise taxes, and (10) modifying the tax
rules for dual capacity taxpayers. We discuss each change proposed by the budget by comparing it to current law and
how the literature has decided the issue should be treated under a neutral tax system.
In the second section, we examine the taxation of fossil fuel production as a whole by comparing it to other industries.
We discuss two methods for measuring the effect of the tax code on the industry, the marginal effective tax rate on
capital and the average effective tax rate. We also discuss the limitations of each method and which taxes to include
in the tax rate. We then review past estimates of the marginal effective tax rates on fossil fuel production from a variety
of sources.
In addition, we present three new estimates of the average effective tax rate of fossil fuel production. We used two
data sources for this calculation: the Use of Commodities by Industries after Redefinitions tables for 1998-2009 in the
US Input-Output accounts from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA); and Table 6.18D: Taxes on Corporate
Income by Industry in the 2012 National Income and Product Accounts, also by the BEA. We calculate the average
effective tax rate on capital from all federal, state, and local income taxes. We also calculate the average effective tax
rate from all taxes on both a value added and gross revenue basis.
In the third section, we look at the effects the tax changes will have on the prices and quantities of goods produced by
each sector in the economy. We utilize a general equilibrium model of the United States and compare prices and
quantities under the proposed budget to a policy where the same amount of revenue is raised through a uniform
corporate tax rate increase on all sectors. We assume capital and labor are mobile between industries but isoelastically
supplied to the US and that production occurs in 22 perfectly competitive industries. Expenditures are made on private
investment and consumption, government investment and consumption, intermediate good purchases by the
industries, and the rest of the world through imports and exports. Parameters for the capital and labor supply functions
are taken from the literature. Imports and export parameters are calibrated. In this model, we choose a translog
functional form for the firm cost functions and the representative consumer’s expenditure function to allow varying
degrees of substitution between all inputs, change in the relative importance of particular inputs over time due to
technological progress, and change in overall productivity due to technological progress. We use a regression to
determine the values of the parameters that define these relationships. This regression has an endogeneity problem
that must be dealt with since prices, a right hand side variable, is dependent on cost shares, a left hand side variable,
Additionally, since the cost shares of all the inputs must sum to one, the error terms of the regressions are correlated.
We deal with both of these problems by performing the regression via iterated three-stage least squares.
The data used in the regressions and simulation comes from several sources. The first is a system of U.S. national
accounts covering the years 1960 to 2005 compiled by Jorgenson (2007). This data is converted to NAICS basis using
the 1997 Economic Census’s Bridge between NAICS and SIC. Additional data comes from the BEA Tables of the
Use of Commodities by Industries from 1997-2010 and the BEA Gross Output Price Index from 1987-2010.
The proposal itself is analysed by comparing a state where the proposal is implemented to a state where the same
amount of revenue is raised through a uniform increase in corporate tax rates on all sectors. In both cases, we allow
for the possibility that the proposal makes the tax system more efficient by reducing favourable treatment of fossil
fuels by including current law taxes on production and capital by sector and labor overall.
Results
The proposals in the President’s 2013 budget to increase the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund excise tax rate, target the
domestic manufacturing deduction, modify the dual capacity rules, and reinstate the Superfund excise taxes reduce
the neutrality of the tax code. The proposals to repeal the capital gains treatment of coal royalties and increase the
G&G amortization period are neutrality enhancing. The neutrality of repealing LIFO, percentage depletion, and the
expensing of IDCs and coal exploration is unclear.
Although some of the individual tax provisions identified for repeal in the President’s 2013 budget favor fossil fuel
production, it is not clear that the tax code as a whole does. Previous studies calculating marginal effective tax rates
on capital employed in fossil fuel production have had mixed results. Our calculations show the average effective tax
rate on capital used in fossil fuel production is 2.9 percentage points higher than the economy wide rate. However
these taxes are only a minority of taxes paid by the industry. Calculating average effective tax rates for all taxes on
fossil fuel production gives a tax rate that is either 1.5 or 8.8 percentage points higher than the economy wide rate,
depending on the base used.
General equilibrium results indicate that the proposal will increase the cost of fossil fuel producing industries by 2.2
to 2.5 percent, decrease their output by 0.1 to 1.0 percent, and decrease their demand by 1.0 to 3.2 percent. Fossil fuel
commodities such as petroleum, coal, and natural gas will see a 2.2 to 2.5 percent increase in price. The excess burden
of the additional revenue gained is an additional 18 percent of revenues higher than if the tax increase were applied
uniformly across all sectors.
Conclusions
Some of the changes proposed in President’s 2013 budget increase the neutrality of the tax code while others reduce
it. The evidence of past research on the overall tax treatment of fossil fuel production is similarly mixed. However,
we find that the average effective tax rate on fossil fuel production is higher than the rate for the rest of the economy
by 1.5 to 8.8 percentage points. Our general equilibrium simulation also indicates that the budget proposal will increase
the price of fossil fuels by 2.2 to 2.5 percent and reduce their production by 0.1 to 1.0 percent. We also find that the
proposal will have a higher excess burden of taxation: it is 18 percent of revenues higher than if the tax increase were
applied uniformly across all sectors.
References
Department of the Treasury. 2012. “General Explanations of the Administration’s Fiscal Year 2013 Revenue
Proposals.”
http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/tax-policy/Documents/General-ExplanationsFY2013.pdf.
Joint Committee on Taxation. 2012. Description of Revenue Provisions Contained in the President’s Fiscal Year 2013
Budget Proposal. JCS-2-12. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
Jorgenson, Dale W. 2007. “35 Sector KLEM.” http://hdl.handle.net/1902.1/10684.