From last night’s State of the Union address:
For example, over the years, a parade of lobbyists has rigged the tax code to benefit particular companies and industries. Those with accountants or lawyers to work the system can end up paying no taxes at all. But all the rest are hit with one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world. It makes no sense, and it has to change. (Applause.)
Highest corporate taxes in the world? I hollered at the TV that this was Chamber of Commerce crap. Not being Rushbo, however, I checked before shooting off my mouth in public.
Turns out the answer is, it depends. Tax rates, as the President pointed out, can have little or no relationship to taxes actually paid. Every nation has its own complicated system of taxation, and direct comparisons are very difficult to make. But one method produced this result:
Other methods show our corporate taxes higher than some developed nations, lower than others. No pattern, at least that I could see, links corporate taxation convincingly either to economic success or failure.
I have no real problem with what the President may have been driving at in this section of his speech. To the extent that his vague and careful remarks meant anything at all, it seemed to be that the big corporations slime out of their taxes and leave Mom and Pop stores to make up the difference. Probably this is so. Certainly neither party will do much about it. This is America.
I’m sorry, however, that Mr. Obama went for a cheap applause line which reinforced the GOP’s ancient Big Lie: that Americans, poor babies, stagger through life under one of the world’s heaviest tax burdens.
But take a look at Business Pundit’s ranking of tax rates in 12 developed nations. Belgium taxes the most heavily, followed by Finland, Germany, Denmark, Italy and France; the United States is among the lowest — below Switzerland, but slightly above Australia, Canada, Japan, and the United Kingdom.
High taxes or low, only one country on the list can’t afford universal health care for its citizens. Again, this is America.
Here you go, 2008 comparison of U.S. vs. foreign corporate tax burdens by CBPP:
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=784
Posted by: on January 26, 2011 5:50 PMHe will always be President Win The Future now. WTF.
Posted by: Mike Goldman on January 27, 2011 6:27 AMThis debate is really very complicated. For several years I was on the board of a large media US media company. The overall tax we paid was almost 50%. Now, if we had had foreign divisions or made a bunch of stuff overseas (re: Apple, other computer companies, GE, etc.) then we could have parked profits and intellectual property in Ireland and cut our taxes somewhere into the teens.
So the current system really does favor large multinational outfits, who really are the ones that should be paying most taxes.
Posted by: Mike on January 27, 2011 9:21 AMSame lies they are telling us in Germany. Probably all over the world. Same bullshit. Same dumbheads who vote for their slave-drivers again and again. As good Christians will.
Posted by: Peter on January 27, 2011 12:15 PM