U.S. Corporate Tax Rate Becomes Highest on April 1
Michael Cohn continues to put up interesting and good stories on Accounting Today. If you are like me, I never thought I would be reading a publication like this. I never took an accounting class in my life. I basically hate numbers analysis, but can do it if I have too! That is just another drudgery… The Drudgery of the Numbers. Anyway here is the link to the story for your weekend reading.
Here is a brief comment I made:
It is a good April fools joke, but of course it is no joke. I am sure we have been number one in tax complexity and number pages of Tax Statutes (which is around 73,000 pages) for quite a long time. When it comes to numbers of pages for an income tax filing, 57,000 pages reported to be GEs filing, that certainly should make us proud. We’re NUMBER ONE, WE’RE NUMBER ONE…
What would be interesting, and I am sure more difficult to do, would be to see a Country by Country comparison on an “effective rate” basis. In spite of our high tax table rate, we know that the percent of tax collected as compared to GNP is at all time lows, so something isn’t adding up right. I have to believe that a lot of that has to do with credits, exemptions, deductions, adjustments, special provisions, loopholes, etc, etc, etc..
@Me To, I just posted this comment:
When April 1 rolls around, not only will the US have the higest corporate tax rates in the world, but it will continue to be the only nation that has erected a East Berlin Tax Wall to prevent its own citizens from relocating abroad to capture foreign markets for US exports. The US stands alone in the world as the only nation that subjects its citizens abroad to home country income taxes as if they never left home. This is on top of the taxes they pay on their world wide income to their host countries. Every other country practices territorial taxation. Their citizens who go abroad are patriots because they capture the markets that create jobs and prosperity back home. ] A quick cmpaarison: USA: Trade Deficit $745 billion, China trade deficit $300 billion, unemployment rate 8.3% Germany: Trade SURPLUS $224 billion, China trade surplus $15 billion, unemployment rate 6.8% (lowest in 20 years)
Products don’t sell themselves. It takes feet on the ground. All our trade competitors have them but the US does not. Double taxation makes US expats 3 to 5 times more expensive than those from any other country.
Get the picture? Congress: Tear down this wall!