Sure they are, if you reduce taxes on one targeted industry without regard to the prevailing tax rate, it's effectively a subsidy. Carving out a tax break specifically for oil is like handing them money compared to other industries who have to pay the full rate. The difference between that and the interest subsidy to Tesla is that it's much bigger and Tesla at least arguably represents a legitimate reason to distort the market.

Good for Germany and Toyota. The tech will be here, they'll be playing catchup, or explicitly neglecting their own tech because they have cheap access to ours.

Reduced taxes or tax breaks for an industry lets them keep more of what they earn and do something useful with it.

Taxpayer funded subsidies are like taking money out of your wallet and setting it on fire, most of the time.

Can you explain the difference as far as balance sheets?

Gov't - down money Recipient - up money

Does the mechanism really matter?

EDIT: Hypothetically, let's say the government gave one company a direct subsidy, another a tax rebate, and a third a targetted one-company-only tax break, all for X dollars. You're saying these are substantially different from a macroeconomic perspective? And different enough that a few million in one method is egregious while 50 billion via another method is just how things should be?

One is real dollars (subsidy), one is potential dollars - tax revenue doesn't exist without actual revenue to create it. If the business bankrupts without ever making a dime, you haven't lost anything through a tax break. If you give the business 100 million in capital and they bankrupt, you've just lit 100 million of our tax dollars on fire.

To add to this, looking at the upside of the risk:

If the company is successful with a subsidy or a loan, they've first got to make up the raw dollar value of the subsidy (in extra taxes) or loan (in repayments) before additional taxes become an ROI.

If the company is successful with a tax break, they can start reaping rewards right away as (assuming there is some limited taxation involved), tax revenues increase with volume.

However, with either option you're still gambling with public funds and policy and there are many ways to screw the public fiscally. I'm personally against using the tax code for social engineering purposes (punitive, stimulative, or otherwise), and doubly against subsidies in nearly all cases.

> Reduced taxes or tax breaks for an industry lets them keep more of what they earn and do something useful with it.

like coke and hookers and yachts