How Taxpayers Help the Gas Industry: Free Services

Photo: The Rocket Courier

The Bradford County Prothonotary Sally Vaughn shows a stack of paperwork she and her staff must attend to for the gas industry. Our tax dollars at work. The impact the gas industry has made on county services is substantial and puts an enormous burden on the prothonotary office. This stack of forms in the picture represents at least two weeks work by a county employee. Ms.Vaughan reported that a fulltime employee is needed in the front office almost continuously just to assist title searchers with computers and other machinery that often incur mechanical problems.

Gas Drillers Have It Made: PA Taxpayers Foot the Bill

This from PennFuture:

Tax breaks for gas drillers

In Pennsylvania, gas drillers don't pay property taxes on the value of the natural gas as they do in Texas and other states. And thanks to the 2005 Energy Policy Act, passed by Congress and signed by President George W. Bush, almost all the costs of drilling can be directly deducted from drilling companies' taxes. The Intangible Drilling Costs tax deduction allows companies to directly deduct 70 percent of costs including wages, supplies, site preparation, fuels, chemicals and other equipment needed for drilling. Pennsylvania taxpayers foot the bill when they pay their federal income tax.