Biden Proposes Four Times Increase Tax On Big Oil's Stock Buybacks

President Biden stated at this year's State of the Union address that share repurchase taxes should be tripled as retaliation for Big Oil's "outrageous" earnings.

“You may have noticed that Big Oil just reported record profits.

"Last year, they made $200 billion in the midst of a global energy crisis. It’s outrageous", the U.S. president said.

He continued by stating that energy corporations were "rewarding their CEOs and shareholders" with stock buybacks rather than investing their earnings in increased oil production and lowering fuel prices.

In order to improve this less-than-ideal situation, the President then suggested that oil firms should be subject to quadruple taxes on share repurchases, adding: "They will still make a big profit."

The Biden administration seems to hold the sector solely accountable for changes in retail fuel prices, at least when those changes are upward.

This is the most recent in a string of attacks on Big Oil from the White House.

Since the majority of American oil producers have started to be cautious with their expenditure plans and send out clear indications that production expansion is not their top priority, the President has threatened the industry with a windfall profit tax and accused it of profiting from the Iraq War.

As the oil sector continued to be obstinate in its failure to heed requests for more investments in new production, Biden also threatened "other constraints" that he did not identify.

Energy executives have cited inflation as well as the Biden administration's own energy policies, which substantially subsidise a move away from fossil fuels, as barriers to such a strategy.

Meanwhile, according to industry sources, the White House is making it more difficult for any new production to start up by instituting a cumbersome permitting procedure that puts some projects' economic viability at risk.