Word: synfuel
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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With so much at stake, the synfuelers have pumped money into a campaign to preserve their tax break. At the center of the synfuel lobby in Washington is a consortium called the Council for Energy Independence. It's a name worthy of the most successful Washington lobbies, in which private interests camouflage their mission under the banner of a worthy-sounding cause. The council is directed by one of Washington's premier tax lobbyists, Kenneth J. Kies, managing director of the Clark Consulting Federal Policy Group. A former chief of staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation, the congressional panel...
...experts differ on how high oil prices would have to go to wipe out the full value of the credit, but most agree that if oil were to remain at recent peak levels, or climb even higher, few synfuel operators could claim the full credit. Citing that uncertainty, the Marriott Corp., which has invested in four synfuel plants, temporarily suspended production in January. Before the shutdown, Marriott had racked up $370 million in synfuel profits...
Since 2002, the Council for Energy Independence has spent $2 million lobbying Congress to preserve the tax credit, according to reports filed with the Senate Office of Public Records. Overall, TIME estimates, the synfuel lobby has spent more than $5 million during that same period. The effort has got results. In recent years, the lobby has successfully turned aside efforts to revoke the IRS rulings on which the tax credits are calculated. It beat back an effort in the House Ways and Means Committee last year to send a bill to the House floor that would have virtually eliminated...
...written in the obscure jargon of all special-interest tax breaks--almost impossible to decipher, so bewildering is its language. At first glance, it looks like nothing more than a technical amendment to clarify some arcane section of tax law. But one clause offers a clue. It says the synfuel credit will be based not on current oil prices--the yardstick used in the past--but on "the amount which was in effect for sales in calendar year...
...prices were safely below the line to allow synfuel producers to claim the maximum credit. The stealth amendment would roll back the calendar. (Sort of like your missing the deadline for your mortgage payment, then backdating your check to avoid a late charge. But much more lucrative.) The backdating clause was in a larger bill introduced in the Senate by Charles Grassley, the Iowa Republican who heads the Senate Finance Committee. It was inserted in the Tax Relief Act, which provides aid for Hurricane Katrina victims and sets new policies for tax-exempt groups. With so many higher profile issues...