OCR Text |
Show .i;.is .u;.ist g.vs hack i:i i:i:ks Launching a campaign designed design-ed to show American taxpayers how gasoline racketeer are stealing steal-ing millions of dollars a year from road funds and other government gov-ernment revenues, Continental Oil company takes the lead in the campaign against bootleggers bootleg-gers of petroleum products and during February will publish a .scries of advertisements in more than 1000 American newspapers. These advertisements are designed de-signed on behalf of the oil industry, in-dustry, to show th 0 widespread effect which has been produced by "gasoline racketeers", who are evading tiio taxes paid Illegitimate Il-legitimate oil companies, to the tune of about $50,000,000 a year. Th is enormous sum fails to rencli the treasuries of the various vari-ous states annually because of these tax evaders, who, in most cases, pocket the difference, sell-tiieir sell-tiieir product on the same basis ba-sis as that of legitimate gasoline gaso-line on which the tax is paid. How this theft from the public pub-lic treasury is forcing higher taxes and retarding road building build-ing work that would furnish em ployment to thousands of jobless job-less citizens is pointed out in this series of Conoco advertisements. advertise-ments. As an instance, a recent drive on tax evaders in Pennsylvania Penn-sylvania resulted in collection of $125,000 a month in delinquent delin-quent gasoline taxes. The total of delinquent gasoline taxes in that state is reported at more than $3,600,000 enough to build 616 miles of improved highway. The advertisements point, out that by various subterfuges, the I . public treasury is denrived of many millions. Motorists are urged to buy gasoline from legitimate legi-timate companies, thus serving the double purpose of helping to eliminate racketeers and insuring insur-ing to themselves, the benefits from the tax money such as improved im-proved roads and other tax-financed projects. The Continental Oil company Advertisements represent the first newspaper advertising campaign cam-paign projected by one of the major oil companies to familiarize familiar-ize the motorist with the consequences conse-quences of buying and using he-branded he-branded "boootleg" gasoline, which is sometimes sold at "out prices" to attract the unwary motorist. In the latter instance the tax is being split between the customer and the bootlegger, bootleg-ger, despite the fact that the customer may be unaware of this condition. |