Yesterday, I talked about repeated efforts by the Center for American Progress (CAP) to demonize the oil and natural gas industry as a way to promote unfair and harmful punitive tax increases.

CAP has been among the most persistent sources of misinformation about our company and our industry, which is why it’s important to set the record straight.

It seems clear that CAP is trying to lay the groundwork for yet another bid to get Congress to impose new and unfair tax increases on large oil and gas companies.

One way they do that is by saying we pay less than our fair share. CAP’s source for this charge? A report from anti-oil activist group Citizens for Tax Justice, which distorts and omits the facts in order to claim ExxonMobil pays a shockingly low – and inaccurate – effective tax rate.

To give one example, the group doesn’t acknowledge foreign tax payments when calculating the effective tax rate. That’s like not counting an individual’s Social Security taxes or state and local income taxes when calculating the taxes one has paid on wages. Double taxation is no less fair for companies than it is for individuals.

NY Times: Oil and gas industry pays highest tax rate

For the record, ExxonMobil’s effective U.S. tax rate for the last several years has been about 32 percent. That’s in line with what the New York Times reported recently when it researched the relative tax burdens of various industries.

The Times found that big energy firms like ours not only pay the most in absolute terms, we also had the highest effective income tax rate – 37 percent – for the years 2007 to 2012. Calculations by the American Petroleum Institute (API) show a 44.6 percent overall effective tax rate for our industry for the decade 2002 to 2012. Those are statistics the Center for American Progress routinely neglects to mention because it doesn’t fit the group’s narrative.

Are they subsidies or not?

The biggest error in CAP’s analysis is describing legitimate tax provisions that apply to all American industries as “special tax breaks” and “wasteful subsidies.”

I’ve pointed out before that our industry does not get any special tax favors. These items are simply the deductions for the costs of doing business and other tax provisions that are available across all sectors of the economy.

In fact, when it comes to one particular tax provision – the Section 199 manufacturing tax deduction – we are specifically disadvantaged compared to other American industries which get a higher deduction for qualified production income.

The CAP analysis doesn’t stop here though. As with foreign tax payment credits (available to every other industry and taxpayer to avoid double taxation), CAP suggests that deductions for drilling costs are special tax breaks.  Not so. Once again, companies like ExxonMobil receive no special treatment.

With regard to intangible drilling costs – which are equivalent to deductible R&D costs for other industries – the so-called Big Oil companies are allowed a smaller deduction than the full 100 percent deduction non-integrated oil and gas companies may take.

To learn more, check out the American Petroleum Institute’s primer on these issues, which explains why oil and gas tax treatments are neither unique nor are they subsidies.