Taxes, what taxes
Editorial…
(Kaieteur News) – If to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), then far less should be expected to Guyana. When ExxonMobil Holdings Corporation could be so uncaring, so reckless, to file with the SEC that it paid US$1.1B in 2025, that highlights what this country has for a partner. If ExxonMobil can claim that payment (and it did), then there is no limit to what it could do to the Guyana Government and the people of Guyana. A driller for oil should be careful about the line that it walks: a claimant of what it did not do, one that takes a huge risk with an SEC filing with that US$1.1B tax hole.
ExxonMobil did not pay Guyana’s sole taxing authority, the GRA, any US$1.1B in 2025. ExxonMobil’s shifty and self-serving 2106 oil contract has a provision in Article 15.1 that exempts it from paying a series of taxes, with taxes on income from petroleum operations being the highlight. Once again, we at this publication ask these simplest of questions. What US$1.1B in taxes paid in 2025? Paid to which part of the GRA? When was that paid? When did money, over a billion in taxes paid, leave ExxonMobil’s treasury and reach into Guyana’s treasury? But the company has a receipt, a tax certificate, for taxes that it did not pay itself.
That is not a sleight of hand move. It is a sleight of hand trick along with Guyanese citizens and U.S. citizens being sold the Brooklyn Bridge and told how great of a favour they got from ExxonMobil. Not a cent paid in income taxes on operations, yet a trick of this magnitude can be so barefacedly played on the people of two countries. Only the most brazen and determined risktaker of a company would think of something like that, then arrange it, and last do it.
The people of this country are shortchanged with taxes that should be due to them in the normal course of business. The American people do not get their due, for they also are squeezed through receiving less. Regular companies and ordinary people pay their taxes. ExxonMobil pay its people to play these types of games. The Government of Guyana is seemingly happy to go along with this tax charade of no taxes paid by ExxonMobil, and a tax receipt/certificate issued to the company. A handful of U.S. Senators are not happy at all, at what is seen as nothing but a crude tax hustle. One that if stopped would save U.S. taxpayers approximately US$71.5B over 10 years. The PPP/C Government has dodged this farce of a tax setup, seemingly unconcerned about the substance and appearance of the issue. In the U.S., there is concern over what does not make sense, and insults the intelligence.
We have a couple more questions for local taxpayers. If ExxonMobil can take this risk with US$1.1B in taxes that it did not pay, then how much more risk may it not take with a billion barrels from recent oil discoveries that it refuses to disclose? Oil operations are 200 kilometers offshore, and Guyana is in the dark (while enjoying it). Six decades after national independence and governments have no idea about how to deliver a reliable supply electricity to citizens. What interest would it have, what would it want to know and do, about huge oil developments 200 kilometers from shore, a planet away? Further, ExxonMobil could be so openly aggressive with US$1.1B in taxes that it did not pay, how much more aggressive may it not be a billion (US) in audit findings that it does not want to see the light? And, if ExxonMobil can look at the Government of Guyana and the people of Guyana in their faces, and call itself a partner, after its US$1.1B scheme, then how much can this company still be assessed as a partner to be trusted?
We study the lengths to which this supergiant of an oil company goes for slightly over a billion US dollars, and raise this last question. What else, how much further, would ExxonMobil not go, in pulling the trigger and taking off nonchalantly when the stakes are higher and the dollar amounts are bigger?
Source: Kaieteur News
