Joint Committee on Taxation was already flagging oil and gas subsidies in the 1920s
The Joint Committee on Taxation of the US Congress has gradually posted many of its publications going back as early as 1926. Special tax rules for natural resources were a focus of JCT's attention even in its earliest days. By the mid-1920s, standard cost depletion had already been jettisoned for discovery value. Under cost depletion, taxpayers could write off what they'd invested in the mining property. Discovery value depletion introduced subsidization, as it allowed the write off of the value of minerals at the time of discovery, even if that value was more than the investm