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THE WINDFALL TAX WAS SUPPOSED TO REIN IN FOSSIL FUEL PROFITS. INSTEAD IT HAS SAVED CORPORATIONS BILLIONS
Loophole in energy profits levy will hand oil and gas companies up to £18bn over next three years
BY ALEX CHAPMAN
28 NOVEMBER 2023
Last week the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) released new data which highlights how little this government’s ‘windfall tax’ has actually done to rein in the profits of fossil fuel companies.
Back in May 2022, the UK government announced the energy profits levy, as a response to the growing pressure for a ‘windfall tax’ on the massive profits being generated by companies pumping oil and gas in the North Sea. These profits were fuelled by skyrocketing fossil fuel prices in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The levy raised the effective rate of corporation tax paid on oil and gas profits from 40% to 65%, and again to 75% in November 2022.
But, it came with a caveat. Despite the UK’s urgent need to kick its addiction to expensive fossil fuels, this government didn’t want to discourage investment in more oil and gas extraction. So they included a tax loophole to ensure that companies investing in new projects to pump fossil fuels out from under the North Sea would see their tax relief (already generous by most standards) rise to 91%. In other words, fossil fuel companies could deduct 91% of their capital investment costs from their corporation tax bill. The ‘windfall tax’ may have, on the surface, attempted to tackle the grotesque profits being raked in by massive companies in the midst of the cost of living crisis – but it also made it cheaper for these companies to extract the fossil fuels contributing to the sky-high cost of living in the first place.