Higher Oil Tax for Superfund Voted by Panel

House and Senate negotiators agreed Thursday on a $9-billion package calling for higher oil taxes and a new levy on business to pay for the nation’s Superfund toxic waste cleanup program over the next five years.

Congress is expected to approve the compromise easily but Treasury Secretary James A. Baker III says he will recommend that President Reagan not sign it. The package includes a variation of an oil import fee, long opposed by the Administration.

The package contains a special income tax to be paid by most businesses--from restaurants to department stores--and substantially higher levies on oil, particularly on imported petroleum. Critics have warned that industry will simply pass on the additional costs to consumers in such critical necessities as gasoline, heating and groceries.

Termination Notices

The agreement was forged as the Environmental Protection Agency was sending termination notices to cleanup contractors around the country, warning that the program would end Oct. 31. Taxing authority for Superfund expired a year ago and cleanups of toxic dumps have been slowed around the country since then while Congress argued over how to shape and pay for a five-year extension.

During its first five years, Superfund spent $1.6 billion and cleaned up only a handful of dumps. The Reagan Administration sought a $5.3-billion program, much less than congressional negotiators have approved. The Superfund plan agreed to in July sets cleanup standards and requires industry to inform the public when dangerous chemicals are released into the environment.

The package represents a compromise between House negotiators who wanted to fund much of the program with taxes on oil and chemicals under a “polluter pays” concept and senators who pushed for creation of a new federal excise tax to spare the oil industry substantially higher levies.

“I think the House went more than half way,” said Rep. Thomas J. Downey (D-N.Y.), a negotiator who had opposed a new broad-based tax.

But a spokesman for the American Petroleum Institute called the package “totally unjustified and unfair,” saying the industry will be charged 13 times the amount it paid for Superfund in the past.

“The record is clear that 6,000 companies from every industry as well as local, state and federal governments have contributed to waste sites and the petroleum industry’s share is very small,” the institute said in a statement. “Yet, under this proposal, this single industry would be burdened with costs as high as all the rest of industry combined.”

Differential on Levies

The package calls for a differential on levies between domestic and imported petroleum. Domestic producers would pay 8.2 cents a barrel. Importers would pay 11.7 cents a barrel. Previously, both paid a flat 0.79-cents-a-barrel tax. The new levy would raise $2.75 billion.

“This differential should not be construed as any precedent for raising revenue in the future,” Downey said.

Addressing his “colleagues in the Northeast,” Downey said at a news conference that he hopes oil importers will “swallow” the hike without passing it on to consumers. New England relies heavily on imported oil. “It’s a one-time deal,” Downey said.

Sen. Lloyd Bentsen (D-Tex.) led the fight in the negotiations against the House-proposed higher levies. He declared that he won a “major victory” by blocking a House plan to charge an additional tax on wastes that would have hit oil companies even more.

Tax on Corporations

“Big oil doesn’t like it because they import a lot of oil,” a Bentsen spokesman said. “It’s very good for domestic producers, though.”

In addition, the compromise calls for a broad-based tax on corporations to raise $2.5 billion. Businesses would pay 0.12% of the new alternative minimum income tax, a complex formula set up under the new tax revision act to be used by corporations that otherwise would pay little or no income tax under the regular formula.

Under this plan, corporations would pay $12 for each $10,000 in tax liability calculated under the minimum tax formula, which critics contend will hurt many small businesses.

The package also includes $1.25 billion in general revenues and $1.4 billion in taxes on chemical derivatives. The remainder would come from interest earnings and charges against polluters.

1-Cent Tax on Gasoline

Attached to the Superfund legislation is a 1-cent tax on gasoline to be used to pay for cleaning up leaking underground storage tanks. That would raise an estimated $500,000.

In the past, Baker has said that he would recommend a veto if the package included a new broad-based tax and higher taxes on oil. But a spokesman for the Treasury Department shied away from a specific threat Thursday.

“We’re not using the word veto,” he said. “What we’re saying is the proposed funding mechanism is such that the secretary of Treasury will be unable to recommend that the President sign the measure.”

Congressional negotiators were divided in their assessment of whether Reagan would pocket-veto the legislation. In a pocket veto, the President receives a bill from Congress within 10 days of its adjournment and fails to sign or return the bill before Congress leaves. Congress is expected to go home next week.

Easy Override Predicted

Downey, predicting an easy override of a veto, said he would seek to keep Congress in Washington to prevent such a move. But other members said it is highly unlikely that Reagan would use the pocket veto because of the wide public support of the cleanup program.