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Show RANSOM MONEY The oil industry, says Baird II. Markham, director of the American Petroleum Industries committee, is captive of the tax collector. The motorist who actually pays a "ransom" in exorbitant taxes every time he buys gasoline or other petroleum products will say "amen" to that. And he knows only a part of the story, lie probably doesn't know, for example, that the industry's tac bill now exceeds 1,000,000,000 a year a colossal burden laid upon the shoulders of those who drive automobiles. He doesn't know that the gas tax has grown 7,500 per cent in rate and 6,000 per cent in revenues in 14 years a degree of acceleration that must be unprecedented in the annals of taxation. And this isn't all of it by a long shot. The legislatures aren't satisfied yet. Campaigns are on foot to place new severence taxes on oil products, to increase crude oD production taxes, to impose new taxes ipon already overtaxed wholesale and retail outlets. Whether these proposals fail of realization or not, other campaigns will be instigated, other taxes advocated, new burdens demanded. . When you buy ten gallons of gasoline, you are, on the average, paying sirty cents to the tax collectors directly through the federal and state sales taxes. In some localities you pay appreciable more than this, with the possible addition of a municipal levy. Even then you haven't footed the whole bill. A very substantial percentage of the price of gasoline, not counting the sales tax, represents one or another of the 24 taxes the oil industry pays the federal government, the 68 taxes it pays the states, the five paid to county governments, and the 19 paid to municipalities. The net cost of gasoline, separate and apart from the high cost of taxation, makes it one of the cheapest commodities on the market, in the light of 1913 values. j |