Raise the Hammer

That's your point of view, but it is not one shared by the government of Canada, the WTO, the World Bank etc.

When the oil industry has specific advantageous tax breaks and treatments that other industries cannot benefit from, these are subsidies to this industry compared with others.

Here's one example:

accelerated capital-cost writeoffs recently extended to the proposed liquefied natural gas plants

And I gave you a long list of other mining-industry specific tax breaks. If these are not available to all businesses, at the same rates and with the same conditions, they are subsidies. Surely you understand that there are all sorts of rules about which "legitimate business expenses" can be deducted, at what rates, and what rates capital depreciation is calculated.

The former Conservative government pledged to scale back fossil-fuel subsidies at a Group of 20 meeting in Pittsburgh in 2009, and did cut some tax incentives for the oil sands.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on...

I'm pretty sure the Conservative government would have not have pledged to eliminate subsidies if there weren't any! Even the oil industry executives quoted in the article admit they receive special tax subsidies, but justify the special fiscal treatment in terms of the capital intensiveness and risk of the industry.

The article quotes an oil executive claiming, not that they don't receive any subsidies, but that are not net receivers of subsidies (i.e. they pay more in tax than they receive in subsidies).

CAPP’s Mr. Brunnen noted the industry paid $18-billion in federal, provincial and municipal taxes and royalties last year, and can hardly be considered to be a net beneficiary of subsidies.

So we can add the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) to the long list of groups that agree that the industry receives tax subsidies!

Comment edited by kevlahan on 2016-02-22 10:41:31