Louisiana is among six major oil producing states that showed the greatest decreases in 2015 of revenues from severance taxes imposed on the removal of natural products such as oil, gas and timber, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2015 Annual Survey of State Government Tax Collections.
The state’s severance tax revenue decreased 15.2% from $862.2 million in 2014 to $731.3 million in 2015. Alaska had the greatest decrease of 95.7%. Severance tax revenues in that state were down from $2.5 billion to $100 million.
Overall, severance taxes among the 50 states decreased 29.1% from $17.8 billion to $12.6 billion.
The 2015 Annual Survey of State Government Tax Collections provides a comprehensive look at state governments and their tax collections. State governments and businesses have been using the survey’s statistics since 1951 to make policy and investment decisions.
Overall, state government tax revenues increased 4.8% last year to $916.5 billion from $875 billion in fiscal year 2014, the bureau says.
Income taxes drove most of the growth, accounting for $27 billion of the $41 billion increase.
