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HARRISBURG, PA – The Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry today said a significantly flawed report issued by the organized labor group Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center shows the lengths to which tax-and-spend proponents will go to push their detrimental economic agenda, and should raise serious questions about the group’s credibility.

“The Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center has a history of going out of its way to discredit job creators and the Marcellus Shale industry specifically with misinformation about the tax liability of businesses in Pennsylvania,” PA Chamber Vice President Gene Barr said. “But this latest report is perhaps the most glaring example of its irresponsible rhetoric designed to gain support for a natural gas severance tax and other business tax increases.”

The PBPC report, in part, used erroneous information about the filing status of natural gas drilling companies in an attempt to claim that they were avoiding taxes in Pennsylvania.

The state Department of Revenue told the Commonwealth Foundation that some of the information in the report is “blatantly wrong” or misrepresented altogether, and said it was based on old data. The Revenue Department also pointed out that the report ignored how much the gas industry is contributing to the state, including $289 million from indirect activity from business taxes, individual taxes on wages and taxes on royalties and lease payments.

Conveniently, PBPC also left out the fact that a federal energy bill raised taxes for the oil and gas industry while increasing deductions for alternative energy.

Officials from PBPC have since acknowledged inaccuracies in the widely published report.

“Any important public policy debate needs to be based on facts,” Barr said. “The Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center has blurred that line too many times. Media outlets, policymakers and the general public should think twice before relying on this organization as a source for reliable and unbiased information about the Marcellus Shale industry or any issue that is counter to its big government agenda.”

Barr said PBPC’s real goal is to preserve bloated government spending that has increased beyond taxpayers’ ability to pay.

“The Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center’s concerns about working families ring hollow,” he said. “This organization hasn’t met a tax it didn’t like. It has repeatedly advocated for higher Personal Income Taxes, a complicated graduated income tax system and an increased sales tax, as well as higher taxes on Pennsylvania’s business community, all of which would ultimately hurt consumers in the form of higher prices for goods and services and lost job opportunities.”

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The Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry is the state’s largest broad-based business association, with thousands of statewide members representing businesses of all sizes and all industry sectors. The PA Chamber is The Statewide Voice of Business™. More information is available on the Chamber’s website at www.pachamber.org.