I take issue with the question about corporate tax rates being at a historic low. One can argue that they are not low enough since we literally have the highest corporate tax rate in the developed world. This explains why companies like Google and Cisco are taking their operations overseas to places like Switzerland and Ireland. Is it more important that corporate taxes are at a historic low domestically or the highest relative to other developed countries? I suspect the latter. When you shop, you don't care as much about what prices were yesterday, just how prices today at one store stock up against the prices at another store. I'm tempted to say we'd actually increase tax revenue if we had a more competitive corporate tax rate, but I'm not sure how much revenue we'd gain from off-shor-ers returning compared to how much we'd lose from the companies who keep their money here in the States.
You're conflating tax revenues (the amount the US actually raises) with tax rates. Tax rates are comparatively high in the U.S., but the amount that the government actually raises on them are much lower because of various loopholes. For example, see http://www.bloomberg.com/news/... describing how Google actually paid 22.2%, not the 35% tax rate. The best solution would be to lower tax rates and close the tax loopholes. But the CAP survey wasn't misleading - American companies wind up actually paying much less in taxes than they historically have.
I take issue with the question about corporate tax rates being at a historic low. One can argue that they are not low enough since we literally have the highest corporate tax rate in the developed world. This explains why companies like Google and Cisco are taking their operations overseas to places like Switzerland and Ireland. Is it more important that corporate taxes are at a historic low domestically or the highest relative to other developed countries? I suspect the latter. When you shop, you don't care as much about what prices were yesterday, just how prices today at one store stock up against the prices at another store. I'm tempted to say we'd actually increase tax revenue if we had a more competitive corporate tax rate, but I'm not sure how much revenue we'd gain from off-shor-ers returning compared to how much we'd lose from the companies who keep their money here in the States.
ReplyDeleteYou're conflating tax revenues (the amount the US actually raises) with tax rates. Tax rates are comparatively high in the U.S., but the amount that the government actually raises on them are much lower because of various loopholes. For example, see http://www.bloomberg.com/news/... describing how Google actually paid 22.2%, not the 35% tax rate. The best solution would be to lower tax rates and close the tax loopholes. But the CAP survey wasn't misleading - American companies wind up actually paying much less in taxes than they historically have.
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