State Severance Taxes

This Bureau of Mines report summarizes State severance taxes imposed on minerals and mineral fuels, provides a hypothetical example of how a State severance tax affects selected components of a firm's income statement, and uses the Bureau's Minerals Availability System (MAS) to estimate the effect of assumed changes in State severance tax rates on copper recovery cost at given levels of potential copper availability. A reduction of the rates to zero or a doubling of them results in changes in costs that are of the same order of magnitude as the cost of transporting copper to the United States from major foreign producing countries.

This study addresses two economic issues relevant to the severance tax: (1) Does California place an abnormally light tax burden on crude oil producers in the state?; (2) What effects would increasing the crude oil severance tax to 6 percent have on California's output, employment, and tax receipts?

This report examines the effects of a new severance tax on tax revenues collected from California oil properties, the share of the tax borne by California oil producers, refiners, and consumers, and the pattern of oil production in the state. The analysis centered around three basic questions: (1) How much net revenue would a severance tax raise for state and local governments in California? (2) Who would pay the tax? (3) How would the tax affect the production of oil within California? Part I provides some basic background information on severance taxation in general and on oil production in California. It also explains the methodological approach to tax analysis. Part 2 presents the results of the formal analysis. In addition to the three basic questions it also answers the questions: (1) How much net tax burden will fall within California and how much can be exported? (2) How do alternative exemption arrangements affect oil production and revenue collection under a severance tax?