Perhaps I am naive, but does anyone advocating a natural gas tax realize this tax will be paid by those using natural gas? If you heat with natural gas, your bill will go up in proportion to the tax rate. If natural gas is used in electrical generation, your electric bill will go up. A tax is paid by consumers and residents-not some magic, faceless corporate entity out there. This is no different than a gasoline tax. If Pennsylvania or the Feds raise the gasoline tax on a gallon of fuel, whether it is a nickel, a quarter, a dollar, the price of a gallon of gasoline goes up for you, the consumer--not some entity know as "big oil."

If you're going to tax natural gas, so be it. However, rather than create another level of bureaucracy, (gas companies forced to add staff to calculate and forward tax payments to Harrisburg, and additional staff to the department of revenue to monitor gas companies to ensure they remit the taxes to Harrisburg) wouldn't it make more sense to simply raise income taxes? After all, the new governor is trying to reduce the deficit. Why add another level of famously inefficient bureaucrats? The “little guys” – all the residents of PA, will pay this tax one way or another, just like we do for all taxes. We may as well do it as efficiently as possible.