Shell Oil And UK Taxation

Original posting, February 2006

So, Shell and other companies continue to 'own' a natural resource and profits surge onwards (31.01.2008). These companies simply identify the source and then take it from international locations. The UK government would have absolutely no inclination to force these obscene profits to be curtailed.

Why?

Simply the revenue that the UK government ‘earns’. The corporation tax is colossal. Then on top of that the revenue raised through petrol taxation is huge.

Two bites of the same very juicy
and lucrative cherry!

Not bad for a waste product like petrol that can only be burned. It has absolutely no other use. It's supreme irony that the Earth will be destroyed as the result of misusing a waste product. The epitaph on the Earth's tombstone could read:

Here in death lay the remains of a parasite
that contaminated planet Earth and it's
supremacy as a species is defined
absolutely only by it's stupidity.

Profit derived from the literal destruction of waste. This evergreens the tax yield by creating a pollutant (CO2) from one product that is then required to be 'cleaned-up'. It cannot be removed, so moving from one place to another appears to satisfy a 'clean-up' procedure. It does nothing of the kind, of course, but 'action' like this does (perversely) justify taxation.

See: Potatoes, Tobacco, Petrol And Tax