Governments Make More on Oil than "Big Oil" Does

Here's a little perspective on Big Oil's obscene profits. The first excerpt comes from left coast flagship Los Angeles Times, of all places. Their criticism of raising corporate taxes left me slack-jawed:

We hate spending $60 on a fill-up as much as the next person, but we don't think Exxon or its outsized profits should be the impetus for bad policy. As we've said before, it's a bad idea to pile more taxes onto oil companies for supposedly excessive profits. Exxon already faces a stiff tax bill -- nearly 50% of its taxable income went to the government in the most recent quarter. Increasing the price of success could discourage the company from making high-risk, high-reward bets on new supplies and technologies, which is the opposite of what the country needs.

The Tax Foundation points out that Big Oil is paying record taxes as well. What the demagogic politicians don't tell us is that Uncle Sam's cut of those record profits is almost 50%! Add in all taxes big oil paid to all governments, and one sees that governments are making more money off of petroleum than the oil companies are!

Here's the chart from the tax foundation. My HTML skills aren't the best, so if the chart is unreadable just go to the tax foundation's web site:

"Big Oil" made $20 Billion in net profits last quarter. "Big Government" made $47 Billion. Who's calling who obscene?