I came up with this chart myself (hold your applause, please), after downloading the data from the White House's website, here. Corporate income tax revenue has dropped all the way down from 7.2% of GNP at the end of World War II to only 1.2% last year.
Go to a different government website, do a little arithmetic, and you'll find that corporate profits are now 12.7% of GNP. Some division then tells you that corporations are paying less than 10% of their income in taxes.
Wow. That's a tax rate that might make even Mitt Romney blush.
Under the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, corporations are people. Well, it appears that they are people who pay little or nothing in taxes.
Ben Franklin said: "In this world, nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes." For corporations, though, neither is true.
There is something of a consensus among Washington, D.C. policymakers that corporate income taxes ought to be cut. That seems to be why the Obama Administration, unbidden by the Republicans, stuck in $100 billion in corporate tax breaks ("accelerated depreciation") into the so-called "compromise" bill that extended the Bush tax breaks for the rich through this year. (A bill that I voted against, by the way.)
That consensus is wrong. Based on this data, the notion of more corporate tax giveaways is laughable. If you care anything about the federal deficit, then corporate income tax revenues need to be higher, not lower.
If we simply returned corporate income tax revenue, as a percentage of GNP, to where it was six years ago in 2006 (2.7% of GNP), then we would reduce the federal deficit by over $200 billion a year. That is roughly fifty times the amount by which the "Buffett Rule" would reduce the deficit.
Fifty times as much.
Why isn't this all over the newspapers, radio and TV? Why aren't our so-called leaders saying something about this? As Casey Stengel, Yogi Berra's manager during most of his playing days with the Yankees, once asked, "Can't anybody here play this game?"
Courage,
Alan Grayson
there is something "not right" about this story. the numbers just don't add up. i'm constantly hearing from economists and the financial community that the U.S. corporate rates are the highest in the world with the exception of Japan. this is why the corporations are keeping their monies out of the U.S. many want our government to cut the corporate rates to bring these monies back to the U.S.
ReplyDeleteagain; from what i've read and am hearing there is something wrong with this story.
318, you bring up an excellent point. Looks to me like somebody has to double check what numbers were used to do the math. After all, we know the source of these numbers has been the author of fraud before!
ReplyDelete3:18 the whole "corporate taxes too high" is a bunch of bogus nonsense selectively touted when pol. want to boost their anti tax credentials. Corporations are investing overseas because of cheap labor and emerging markets. Think about it;1 billion chinese customers, not to mention India who both have a burgeoning middle class ready to spend! They've already taken the US consumer to the cleaners; we've done the "patriotic thing" and spent like there was no tomorrow. When we ran out of money, we simply borrowed from the bank to spend more. Now that we've been bled dry, these companies are headed overseas. This has 10x more to do with the decisions of corporate america than the current tax structure.
ReplyDelete7:03, perhaps some of what you discuss is correct, however again, i've heard we are the Highest in corporate taxes under Japan. i believe this is correct.
ReplyDeletecorporations are Not going to come back into this country until these taxes are lowered. true they use cheaper labor, but many of them do want to bring monies back here. SAD
Who do you think pays those corporate taxes?
ReplyDeleteThey just pass the cost of taxes to the consumers of their products.
You and I pay those corporate taxes.
Just more libtard crap trying to change the subject away from out of control spending.
More cooking of the books.
ReplyDeletecorporations do not pay taxes. the cost of doing business(taxes) is passed on to the consumer. the profits are taxed when the shareholders get dividends. the difference between taxes collected in the story being percentage of gdp has everything to do with the high tax rates. the higher the rates, the lower the tax revenue generated. be careful to read what is actually being written.
ReplyDelete