Mason: Slashing tax benefits for oil industry would cost jobs

President Barack Obama’s plan to slash tax breaks for oil and gas companies would have grave impacts across the entire U.S. economy, warns an LSU economist and banking professor. Joseph Mason says the president’s proposal to close tax benefits for the energy industry in order to pay for up to $200 billion in small business tax credits would lead to the loss of 154,000 jobs across the economy. The job losses would be spread out to affect more than the oil and gas industry, hitting health care and real estate, too. “Though politicians think they are selectively targeting ‘Big Oil’ with these energy tax proposals, they would actually devastate thousands of small American businesses nationwide as well as the workers who depend on them,” says Mason, who analyzed the tax changes for the American Energy Alliance, a nonprofit that lobbies for the energy industry. Mason says the tax change will also lead to more than $68 billion in lost wages and more than $341 billion in lost U.S. economic output.