Say no to a severance tax
The Wolf administration, which seems hellbent on punishing the fossil-fuel industry, has made imposing a severance tax on the natural gas industry one of it’s primary objectives.
According to a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review article “Senate GOP Leader: Shale tax may be considered with offsetting legislation,” Gov. Tom Wolf modeled his version of the severance tax on West Virginia’s tax. Recently, West Virginia’s governor Earl Ray Tomblin, a Democrat, has announced the state will be lowering its severance tax, and there is even talk of elminating it in it’s entirety because of the low price of natural gas and the delicate state of the industry.
Wolf conveniently leaves out the fact that Pennsylvania has some of the highest business taxes already in the country, much different from West Virginia. My request of Wolf and his green team at the Departmemt of Environmental Protection is to follow West Virginia in being more friendly to the coal and gas industries that have created so many jobs in our area.
Christine Checonsky
Washington