The oil-and-gas industry is a perfect example. It has enjoyed special tax preferences since the start of the modern income tax in the early 20th century. Yet despite the cyclical nature of oil-and-gas markets, the industry has made huge profits over the years and proved that demand for its products is more than enough incentive to continue doing business.

We don’t need—and can’t afford—to continue to provide these incentives to this industry. Like all tax breaks, oil and gas exclusions are costly to the U.S. Treasury and shift the tax burden to others, either through higher current tax rates or borrowing that will increase taxes on future generations.

Let’s focus on two of the largest oil and gas tax breaks—the intangible drilling-costs deduction and the special percentage depletion allowance—and how they exemplify the kind of special carve-outs Congress needs to eliminate if it is to reform the corporate tax code. These special breaks offer producers significantly more generous capital cost write-offs than those available to other U.S. taxpayers.

The intangible drilling costs deduction allows qualified oil-and-gas companies to immediately deduct all costs for designing and fabricating drilling platforms, including “wages, fuel, repairs, hauling and supplies related to drilling wells and preparing them for production.” Companies in other industries that construct plants, equipment or other productive assets generally must capitalize all of the associated costs over time, typically based on the asset’s useful life. By targeting subsidies to oil and gas, tax rules like this disadvantage other businesses that make equally important contributions to our economy. The Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that repealing it would save taxpayers $13 billion over 10 years.

Then there’s the special percentage depletion allowance, which allows some oil-and-gas companies to deduct more than they invest in an asset, the very definition of a tax shelter. Natural-resource developers can claim a depletion deduction for the costs of acquiring a proportion of a resource as it is depleted. The special allowance gives independent producers a flat deduction of 15% of their gross income from the first 1,000 barrels-a-day of production. Although the deduction is generally limited to the value of a property’s production, nothing prevents a producer from deducting more than its investment in the property. As a result, oil-and-gas producers or royalty owners may pay zero tax on their income on certain properties. Owners of marginal wells are provided with even more generous rules. Repealing this allowance would save taxpayers more than $12 billion over 10 years, the Joint Committee on Taxation estimates.

Industry supporters may say tax breaks and deductions are what spurred unconventional forms of oil-and-gas production that led to lower energy prices for American consumers.

I would say market forces—including $100-a-barrel oil and technological advances—were the main drivers of the hydraulic-fracturing production boom that brought us shale oil, not broad undisciplined tax subsidies. What’s more, the industry’s tax deductions don’t just go to companies that take risks. They are available regardless of whether a well is being developed with proven technology, drilled in proven formations or would be highly profitable without the favorable tax treatment.

Would energy prices increase for most Americans if the tax breaks were eliminated? It’s unlikely—even if the repeal caused some marginally economic properties in the U.S. to go unexploited. World supply and demand determine oil and gas prices, and what we have seen in the current drop of oil prices is that Saudi Arabia effectively determines the price of oil—even in the U.S.

The oil-and-gas industry likes to say it’s being unfairly singled out when its tax subsidies are cited as examples of our broken tax system, or that anti-fossil-fuel groups are trying to punish it to advance clean energy. Taxpayers for Common Sense sees it differently.

We believe Congress effectively is picking fossil-fuel investments as the winners, while leaving other investments as relative losers. Eliminating the industry’s special deductions and breaks would help Congress broaden the tax base and lower the overall corporate tax rate, a widely supported goal of tax reform.