Changes

===Tax breaks===

A 2011 analysis by Citizens for Tax Justice and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, [http://www.ctj.org/corporatetaxdodgers/CorporateTaxDodgersReport.pdf "Corporate Taxpayers & Corporate Tax Dodgers: 2008-10"] found dozens of companies, including fossil fuels, used tax breaks and various tax dodging methods to have a negative tax balance between 2008 and 2010, while making billions in profits. The utilities/electric industry were found to take in 14% of the federal subsidies, the second highest of any sector behind only finance: Utilities reported a $100 billion profit from 2008 to 2010, but the industry as a whole paid only a 3.7% tax rate.<ref>Robert S. McIntyre, Matthew Gardner, Rebecca J. Wilkins, Richard Phillips, [http://www.ctj.org/corporatetaxdodgers/CorporateTaxDodgersReport.pdf "Corporate Taxpayers & Corporate Tax Dodgers: 2008-10"] Citizens for Tax Justice and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, November 2011 Report.</ref>

The study singled out the following major subsidies benefiting the coal industry:

* Credit for Production of Nonconventional Fuels (annual subsidy: $14 billion)- IRC Section 45K. This provision provides a tax credit for the production of certain fuels. Qualifying fuels include: oil from shale, tar sands; gas from geopressurized brine, Devonian shale, coal seams, tight formations, biomass, and coal-based synthetic fuels. This credit has historically primarily benefited coal producers.

* Exclusion of Benefit Payments to Disabled Miners (annual subsidy: $438 million) - 30 U.S.C. 922(c). Disability payments out of the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund are not treated as income to the recipients.

* Exclusion of Alternative Fuels from Fuel Excise Tax (annual subsiy: $343 million) - IRC Section 6426(d). This section applies to liquified petroleum gas (LPG), P-series fuels (defined at 42 U.S.C. 13211(2)), compressed natural gas (CNG), liquefied natural gas (LNG), liquefied hydrogen,3 liquid coal, and liquid hydrocarbon from biomass.

* The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program ($6.3 billion) - The main structure of the program is to provide low-income households with the means to make their utility payments, the vast majority of which is energy generated by fossil fuels. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has tabulated the percentage of households using fossil versus non-fossil heating fuels in 2001, and ELI used the percentage as a proxy for fossil versus non-fossil expenditures for 2002-2008.

* Black Lung Disability Trust Fund ($1 billion) - pays health benefits to coal miners afflicted with pneumoconiosis, a long-term degenerative disease from constant inhalation of coal dust, also known as “black lung.” Created in 1978, it is funded through an excise tax on coal to support a trust fund covering health costs of affected workers, however the tax is not sufficient to cover all costs, and the BLDTF was given “indefinite authority to borrow” from the U.S. General Fund. By the end of FY 2008, the BLDTF had accrued nearly $13 billion in debt. In 2008, Congress partially “bailed out” the BLDTF, which ELI tabulated as a subsidy to coal.

==External Costs==