New York and Vermont Seek to Impose a Retroactive Climate Tax – Analysis

[rangerrebew]

New York and Vermont Seek to Impose a Retroactive Climate Tax – Analysis
Heartland Author
June 12, 2024
 

Energy producers will be subject to retroactive taxes in New York if the state assembly passes Senate Bill S2129A, known as the “Climate Change Superfund Act.” The superfund legislation seeks to impose a retroactive tax on energy companies that have emitted greenhouse gases (GHGs) and operated within the state over the last seventy years.

If passed, the new law will impose $75 billion in repayment fees for “historical polluters,” who lawmakers assert are primarily responsible for climate change damages within the state. The state will “assign liability to and require compensation from companies commensurate with their emissions” over the last “70 years or more.” The bill would establish a standard of strict liability, stating that “companies are required to pay into the fund because the use of their products caused the pollution. No finding of wrongdoing is required.”

New York is not alone in this effort. Superfunds built on retroactive taxes on GHG emissions are becoming increasingly popular. Vermont recently enacted similar legislation, S.259 (Act 122), titled the “Climate Superfund Act,” in which the state also retroactively taxes energy producers for historic emissions. Similar bills have also been introduced in Maryland and Massachusetts.

https://heartlanddailynews.com/2024/06/new-york-vermont-retroactive-climate-tax-analysis/

[catfish1957]

My advice?  Leave these states, and not pay.  Then let the angry citizens who can't find gas respond.

And finally.... let the judical decide the legality.   Because there is zero proof that fossil fuel use has called climate damage.

[DB]

Just stop selling gas to those states. They can achieve their net-zero carbon emissions overnight.

[Smokin Joe]

Isn't this an ex post facto act? 

Billing any entity for activities that occur before the law was passed (whatever it is) is unconstitutional, just as bringing criminal charges for actions before something was banned.

[GrouchoTex]

Isn't this an ex post facto act? 

Billing any entity for activities that occur before the law was passed (whatever it is) is unconstitutional, just as bringing criminal charges for actions before something was banned.

I would think so, but wouldn't the settlement against tobacco set a (perhaps incorrect) precedent?

[DefiantMassRINO]

So, NY State is laundering its tax increase on its citizens via energy companies to create a $75 Billion government slush fund to sqaunder on incompetence and corruption, not the Climate.

[Smokin Joe]

I would think so, but wouldn't the settlement against tobacco set a (perhaps incorrect) precedent?

I was no fan of that, either, for the same reasons.

(I learned to work on my grandfather's tobacco farm and baling hay for my great uncle. The plant that was, at one time legal tender in the colonies *you could pay your taxes in tobacco* is now rarely grown where I grew up, and then by the Amish who signed no agreements and took no payments not to.

What I found to be a scam was that the Feds did a big study that resulted in listing brands and varieties by their nicotine and tar content.  For the sake of consistency, burn characteristics, and desired flavor, tobaccos are blended in cigarettes and pipe tobacco. Those blends had to be manipulated to maintain the tar and nicotine content, flavor, etc. found in the Federal study, otherwise the tar and nicotine content could vary wildly. Then the Feds sued over maintaining the levels of tar and nicotine in specific brands and varieties.
No medicinal value was credited to tobacco, even though it offsets some symptoms of shock by constricting peripheral blood vessels and redirecting blood volume to the core organs. I have seen lots of accident victims get shaky and smoke a cigarette. (If you will recall, the newsreel images of wounded troops (some with upper torso wounds) smoking a cigarette while being evacuated, and a number of troops who started smoking during a combat tour.
There are other properties (antibacterial, for instance) as well.

Little else got the scrutiny tobacco did as a carcinogenic agent.  Even though smokestack industry emissions peaked and declined about the same time cancer rates did, the credit for the decrease was given to reduction in the number of smokers. Once the desired deep pocket answer (Eeeevil Tobacco, the demon weed!) was found, it is almost as if those researching the cause(s) of lung cancer just stopped looking to see if there were more.

But I never thought I'd see the day when weed was as or more acceptable (despite smelling like skunk) than tobacco.

[Fishrrman]

Sounds like an "ex post facto" tax imposition to me (not "a penalty").

[Kamaji]

New York is becoming stupider by the day.

[GtHawk]

New York is becoming stupider by the day.

You thought California had no competition? Three moron governors and legislatures racing to destroy their states, and at least one of them wants the presidency so they can do for to the entire nation what they did to their states.

[Hoodat]

Isn't this an ex post facto act? 

Billing any entity for activities that occur before the law was passed (whatever it is) is unconstitutional, just as bringing criminal charges for actions before something was banned.

Correctamundo.  But then these are Democrats we're talking about here.  They've never given a damn about what the Constitution says.