RSS/ATOMGreen Tags to Green Taxes
By sblackb • Feb 24th, 2008 • Category: Slightly Political, but Power Releated
While channel surfing the radio at lunch, I catch Rush Limbaugh on a rant about the silliness of solar power and how in the end the very government who encourages the use of renewable energy, will tax us for it when the coffers run low. Now in some cases adding solar panels to your home may be silly (or at least not make financial sense,) but the notion of a tax shortfall is not. You don’t really believe the government will take a pay cut when we all switch to renewable energy, do you? Let’s take a closer look at that for a moment.
Here is a breakdown of my January/February 2008 power bill. With some basic watt-hacking, we used 929 kilowatt hours compared to 1236 last month and 1275 during the same time period for the prior year. The interesting thing about this bill is that we paid $94.61 for power and $10.85 in tax for a grand total of $105.46 or 11.5% tax. In Arizona, the fuel we put in our cars is taxed at a rate of 18 cpg and the fed tacks on another 18.4 cpg for a total of 36.4 cents. You can check your state’s fuel tax rate here: Gas Price Watch. Even our natural gas utility carries a pretty steep tax, although I don’t have the numbers handy at the moment.
Charges for electricity services January 22 – Feb 22
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My point is that a quick analysis of your bills will show you that the states and the fed stand to lose tax revenue if the green power “fad” catches on. To further compound the problem, many states, utility companies, and the fed offer some great tax incentives to add solar panels to your home or business, drive hybrids, and make your home more energy efficient. They are effectively incenting you to create as tax shortfall. Eventually the tax man will be knocking on our door looking for handouts.
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sblackb is Scott and Liz share a passion for the outdoors and want to help protect the natural beauty of our planet. Scott feels like one of the best ways to accomplish this is to take on responsible power use, generation and learning new methods for better living with less resources.
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[...] South Florida Gas Prices Miami Gas Prices I-95 Exit Gas Prices Pririchard-goodman.blogspot.comGreen Tags to Green Taxesand 10.85 in tax for a grand total of 105.46 or 11.5% tax.? In Arizona, the fuel we put in our cars [...]
Green tage or better yet REC Renewable Energy Credits are made when you make clean energy, like my home grid tied solar system. In far away New Mexico the power companies pay you 5 cents for every KwH Killowatt hour of clean electric you make, even if you use it !. They also give you an incentive to install Solar AND even net-metering.
In Arizona you have to give your REC credits to APS, SRP or TEP when you take the incentive to install solar. The incentive they GIVE you is from money they collect from all of us as a clean energy cost. So they give you your money back and take the REC credits, and the Cororation Commission you pay approved this…. amazing, I hope they don’t help us too much.
[...] Original post by WattHackers | Save Power | Go Solar | Live Green [...]