§4612 Definitions and special rules

Summary

Defines words and special rules used for the oil-related tax in this part of the tax code. Crude oil includes condensates and natural gasoline. Domestic crude oil means oil from a well in the United States. Petroleum product includes crude oil. United States covers the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, U.S. possessions, the Northern Mariana Islands, the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, and U.S. foreign-trade zones, with rules from another law used to sort out details. A United States refinery is any U.S. place that refines crude oil. If a U.S. refinery makes natural gasoline from gas, that gasoline is treated as received when made. Premises uses the same meaning as for property income rules. A barrel is 42 U.S. gallons, and fractional barrels are taxed in the same fraction. No one must pay the same tax twice on the same petroleum product if an earlier tax already applied. The Treasury Secretary must make rules for cases when a refinery takes oil out of a pipeline and later puts some back in. Taxpayers can get a credit for amounts they paid before January 1, 1987, into the Deepwater Port Liability Trust Fund and the Offshore Oil Pollution Compensation Fund, plus interest, but only for amounts not already counted. A related business tax credit is allowed and is worked out using rules tied to the Trans‑Alaska Pipeline Liability Fund and to transfers treated as if made on January 1, 1990, and it is limited by a termination date set elsewhere in the law. The government will move money from the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund to the Treasury to cover these credits only when that fund’s unobligated balance is over $1,000,000,000. Unused parts of these credits cannot be carried back to tax years beginning on or before the paragraph’s enactment date. Two specific rules from another tax provision do not apply to this tax.