fwiw, I'm not sure why we call them "subsidies" anyway since we generally equate the term to direct cash payment subsidies like we make to US farmers and farmland owners, and which we do not make to oil or most (any?) other industry.

Anyway, all of the biggest "subsidies" are available to essentially all domestic co's, not just oil.

Oil's profits are staggeringly huge, but then again they're our staggeringly hugest companies with the staggeringly hugest incomes.

Their net profit, though, is around 10%, while MicroSoft and other tech co's are more than double that, around 25-30%.

If you make it too much more expensive for E/M to provide fuel, we'll just end up buying more from the Saudis.

But, ok, we're talking about fed income tax.

First let's understand what some of the words mean

prof·it/ˈpräfit/
Noun:   
A financial gain, esp. the difference between the amount earned and the amount spent in buying, operating, or producing something.
{my bolds]

Pepco is an energy distribution co and, over the 3 three years the article analyzes, Pepco spent over $2 Billion on infrastructure.

Taking one year for simplicity, the article says that Pepco Holdings made ~$300 million in pretax profits that year and then paid no fed income tax on it, while, in contrast, Pepco claimed it lost money and therefore paid no fed income taxes that year.

Here's what happened, in a very simplified way...

Simply put, the organization that wrote the article, Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ), used it's own definition of "profits," and not the government-decreed definition.

I'm too lazy to google the particulars, but it appears that congress, in an effort to promote investment in US energy infrastructure (which, presumably, improves all of our lives, creates jobs, etc.) changed the IRS rules the energy co's can use for accounting for infrastructure investment - it appears that congress approved a "speeding-up" of electric co's expensing of money they spend on improving, maintaining, expanding, etc., energy distribution infrastructure.

So, just like you and I would rather take our entire standard personal deduction in each year on our own taxes, instead of having to spread it out and only take, say, 1/10 of it each year for 10 years, co's also want to take their deductions as soon as possible.

So the new rules allow Pepco and other electric co's to deduct 1/2 of what they spent on infrastructure in the year they spent the money, and the other 1/2 over a number of the following years (to lazy to google the actual number, let's call it 10 years to make it simple). And, for simplicity, let's say the rule previously was that the entire infrastructure expenditure had to be expensed over 10 years, so 1/10 of the expense each of the 10 years. (It might have been longer, like 15 or 20 years, but you get the idea.)

To make it simple, let's say Pepco spent 1 billion on infrastructure (of the 2 billion they actually spent over the 3 years) in that same year that CTJ says Pepco made ~$300 Million in profits. Under the congress-approved new rules Pepco is allowed to expense 1/2, or 500 million of the 1 billion, in that year. Under the old rules they could have expensed only 1/10, or 100 million, in that year.

So for a very simple example, CTJ said:
1 billion income minus 700 million spent = 300 million "profits."

[That 700 million spent included 100 million of the infrastructure expenditure + 600 million of other expenses, as is what would have been done under the old rules.]

What Pepco did was, naturally, use the actual rules, and used 500 million of the infrastructure expenditure in that year.

So, 1 billion income minus 1.1 billion spent = -100 million "profits" (100 million loss).

[That 1.1 billion spent included 500 million of the infrastructure expenditure + 600 million of other expenses, as is done under the new rules.]

Also, understand this: Whether a co deducts a business expense, and thereby reduces it's tax bill, in one year, or spreads it out over 5 years, or 10 years, or whatever, in the end it still deducts the same amount and reduces it's cumulative taxes the same amount. All that's happening is that the timing of the deductions is changing, not the amount or cumulative result of the deductions.

Lastly, the main question is whether electric co's should be able to speed up their deductions of infrastructure expenditures.