[Letter from Sam E. Wohlford to Truett Latimer, February 27, 1954] Page: 1 of 4
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COMMITTEES:
~~1e AGRICULTURE
-j APPROPRIATIONS
SoN LIVESTOCK AND STOCK RAISING
PUBLIC PRINTING
SAM E. WOHLFORD February 27, 1954
DISTRICT 95
STRATFORD, TEXAS
Honorable Truett Latimer
217 Sayles Bird.
Abilene, Texas
Dear 1Mr. Latimer:
A few days in advance of the special session of
the legislature, I want to take this means of directing
to you, my fellow House Member, a letter on a subject
very near the heart of the tax problem which concerns us
most at this time.
We are being asked to provide additional funds
for a worthy cause. The question is that confronts us is:
Where we gonna get the money?
All of us have been made abundantly aware that the
same old tax sources are not inclined to let us saddle
them with any new burdens at this particular time.
I shall have in the hopper a proposal for providing
this revenue from Texas Natural gas without increasing
the already excessive tax rate on this resource, and it is
to ask your support of this plan that I now address you.
Gas producers and royalty owners in Texas now pay
in State taxes 5.72 percent of value of the gas at the well
(except for those fortunate companies which pay on some
compromise or prevailing average weighted field price based
on readings at the recycling plants or at the gate). As
high as this rate is, natural gas pays only a fraction of
the taxes this State should be reciving for the permanent
depletion of its rich resource. One "solution " is to
continue the time-worn practice of upping that percent of
value rate, but even if we raised it ot the point of outright
confiscation, Texas still would be denied a fair return on
gas being sold under oil outdated contracts such as those
existing in my Panhandle district call for 3 or 4 cents
per thousand cubic foot.
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Wohlford, Sam E. [Letter from Sam E. Wohlford to Truett Latimer, February 27, 1954], letter, February 27, 1954; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1196327/m1/1/: accessed June 21, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Hardin-Simmons University Library.