Louisiana’s oil lobby and tax assessors are united in support of a Nov. 3 constitutional amendment to change how oil and gas wells are taxed, in an unusual alliance of two groups that are more often at odds, The Daily Advertiser reports.
The ballot measure would amend Louisiana’s constitution to allow an oil or gas well’s productivity to be factored into the overall value for property tax assessments, allowing parish assessors to raise taxes on productive wells and lower them on less productive operations.
The state’s constitution currently prohibits assessors from factoring how much income oil or natural gas wells generate when establishing overall assessed value. Instead, the constitution limits them to using values based on the hypothetical cost to replace the well based on its age and condition or a fair market value.
However, with statewide majority support on Nov. 3, Constitutional Amendment 2 would allow income from wells to be factored into their taxable value. Read the full story.
