

Who’s going to pay for that BP oil spill in the Gulf? Probably you, no matter what


Paying to clean up the Gulf oil spill is no fun, but it beats being an oily pelican. (AP PHOTO)

Congress is looking to quadruple the tax charged to oil companies to pay for cleanups of oil spills [2]. Given that BP still hasn’t figured out how to stop its underwater geyser of oil in the Gulf of Mexico, clearly the cleanup costs are going to be immense.

One of our readers noticed something in the story that bears repeating. Sen. Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat who is Senate majority leader, fired off the crowd-pleasing line, “Taxpayers will not pick up the tab.” But as commenter GuyinBeachwood said, “An oil tax, like any tax, eventually gets passed down to the consumer. So WE CONSUMERS are going to pay for future spills? NO NO NO NO!!!!!!”

Unfortunately, yes, yes, yes, yes. “Clean up your own mess” is a lesson we all learn in preschool, but there’s almost no way to tax a corporation without the corporation passing on the added cost to consumers. So it may infuriate us to have to pay, but we probably will.

Or we could just lower our demand for oil. Anybody up for that?