depletion allowance

American  

noun

1. a tax reduction allowed on income from exhaustible resources, as oil or timber.

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depletion allowance Cultural  

1. A deduction from taxable income based on the eventual exhaustion or waste of a natural asset, such as an oil field.

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Example Sentences

Since the price of crude oil on which the size of the depletion allowance is based has doubled over the past year, the write-offs will be even greater in 1973.

From Time Magazine Archive

Nothing is more sacred to many Congressmen than the depletion allowance.

From Time Magazine Archive

While industry lobbyists still protested the impending death of the depletion allowance, some individual oil executives were pleased to fend off a much harder blow.

From Time Magazine Archive

For their part, oilmen maintain that they would not have risked North Slope drilling without the depletion allowance, and claim that the allowance is necessary to spur further development.

From Time Magazine Archive

The companies, however, generate such huge tax write-offs from other sources�mainly the foreign-tax credit �that they rarely need to use the foreign depletion allowance.

From Time Magazine Archive