ALBANY – A coalition of environmental organizations is supporting a state senate bill – the Stop Climate Polluter Handouts Act – that would repeal tax code provisions that exempt fossil fuel companies from paying sales and use tax and petroleum business tax for certain uses of greenhouse gas-emitting fuels.
The group said the current law endows $1.6 billion to the fossil fuel industry every year, incentivizing their polluting activity.
NYPIRG Hudson Valley Director Eric Wood said the incentives continue while the fossil fuel companies rake in record profits.
“Fossil fuel companies are hitting us at the pump, they are hitting us heating our homes and now they are taking our tax dollars too just to simply increase their profits,” he said Thursday. “This bill starts to chip away at aiding them to be able to profit so much off of New Yorkers and put money back in our hands to provide thing we need like public health.”
Marisa Guerrero, a policy consultant for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the senate bill would free up $265 million that could be put toward uses that are “far more responsible than lining the pockets of the very industry that fuels the global climate crisis.”
