Not as much as they are now, thanks to the Trump tax cuts.
Wrong. The graduated nature of the previous corporate income tax only substantially helped smaller companies. Larger corporations were paying an effective tax rate that was far above the 18%-21% rate in Europe and Asia and far above the new rate of 21%.
Even in terms of statutory rates, the US (part of "North America" in this chart) was seldom at an historical disadvantage to other countries.
You realize that the new corporate income tax is *not* graduated, right? It is a flat 21%, regardless of the corporation's size.
You never addressed the average "effective" corporate tax rate, the amount that a corporation pays after exploiting all the loopholes (many more than in other countries) and exemptions. Except when you pretend above the 21% statutory rate is the effective rate ("effective tax rate ... new rate of 21%").
And I repeat the point that the Trump tax cuts ended the decades-long foreign income loophole, which allowed U.S. corporations to park billions of dollars overseas and to avoid taxes on income earned overseas. Liberals had been calling for ending this loophole for decades, but few liberals have given Trump credit for finally doing this, because if more people knew about this aspect of the Trump tax cuts, they would not so easily swallow the liberal talking point that the tax cuts mainly helped the rich.
By the way, the JFK tax cuts reduced the top marginal rate, the rate paid by rich folks, from 91% to 70%. So JFK gave the rich a 23% tax cut. Trump cut the top marginal rate by 6.6%.
A 91% tax rate (whether personal or corporate) should be cut. An effective corporate tax rate of 15% doesn't rate the same urgency and justification for further cutting.
The economy had been slow to recover from the 1958 recession. The Kennedy cuts got through through Congress because LBJ negotiated large cuts in the budget (Trump did the opposite; increased the budget).
Still, JFK did not propose a tax cut for the One Percent on top of his own 21% cut, and the Reagan and Bush-43 tax cuts.
Americans entertain some kind of myth that they're the world's most taxed people.
Humm, I'd like to see data on that claim.
You don't believe many large US corporations get away with paying no corporate tax?
"How These Fortune 500 Companies (Legally) Paid $0 In Taxes Last Year" (Fortune, Apr11,2019
link)
"On the average, they got tax refunds."
And are you counting the tens of billions of dollars that American corporations pay in state and local income taxes and property taxes?
You are aware that corporations have been known to set up in states that offer them lower or no state taxes?
I work for a rather large corporation, and in previous years I worked for two much larger corporations. I receive pay and benefits that very few small companies would be able to match.
Corporations self-indulgently overpaying and overcompensating its "elite" entitled self-important tier and upper-management is more so the reason why US corporations couldn't compete globally than blaming it on the myth of the corporate tax rate restricting corporations.
The last thing I want to see is my company's corporate tax rate jacked back up to 35%. I think a flat rate of 21% is more than enough.
Things were going pretty good in the early-1950s when the statutory tax rate was over 50%.
How much do American corporations reward their lower-rung workers if they relocate plants overseas? Often, their jobs are simply gone.
Oh, just hogwash. This is Marxist hogwash. The Trump tax cut for corporations simply brought our corporate income tax rate down to the level that is common in Europe and Asia.
Everything is Marxist or Communist with Trump people. Criticizing the greed of corporations is somehow anarchy.
You might want to remember that our corporations employ millions of Americans and pay billions of dollars each year to contribute to their employees' 401K funds, health insurance premiums, payroll taxes, and unemployment insurance. You realize that your employer pays half of your payroll tax for you, and that your employer pays into your state's unemployment insurance fund on your behalf (at no cost to you) each month, right?
Corporations just started doing those things once Trump's tax cut occurred?
Most people want a job that provides a decent salary and good benefits, including a matching 401K, health insurance, sick leave, and vacation time. Well, who do you suppose provides the majority of those kinds of jobs? Mom and Pop stores? No, corporations provide most of those kinds of jobs.
Most Americans don't work for a large corporation, and most large corporations don't treat their lower-end workers as nicely as you portray. And those that are uncommonly good to workers are able to do so because they avoid paying their fair share of taxes. As well, large corporations like the auto makers provide benefits only because their workers have strong unions.
Let us look at the rate cuts for individual income taxes in the Trump tax cuts to dispel the liberal myth that they mainly helped the rich. Keep in mind that most Americans fall into the second, third, and fourth brackets:
1st bracket -- No change (since they already paid no income taxes, and Trump increased the Earned Income Tax Credit)
2nd bracket ($20K-$79K) -- 20% reduction (from 15% to 12%)
3rd bracket ($79K-$168K -- 12% reduction (from 25% to 22%)
4th bracket ($168K-$318K) -- 14.2% reduction (from 28% to 24%)
5th bracket ($318-$410K) -- 3.1% reduction (from 33% to 32%)
6th bracket ($410K-$610K) -- No reduction (stayed at 35%)
7th bracket ($610K-plus) -- 6.6% (from 39.6% to 37%)
As you can see, the second, third, and fourth brackets, where most Americans fall, got the largest rate cuts. My monthly net income rose by over $200 thanks to the tax cuts. So please, Democrats, keep your hands off them.
The middle-class have been carrying the tax burden, while corporations get away with little or no tax. And wage-earners (not the One-Percent who do no work) will have to continue to shoulder the burden. Unless the large corporations and One-Percent get involved.
I notice you said nothing about the fact that the Trump taxes imposed a $10K cap on SALT deductions (state and local taxes), which has taken a sizable bite out of the wallets of the rich. For someone like me, who pays about $12K in SALT each year, the cap has meant little. But for a person who makes, say, $325K per year and pays $35K or more in SALT, the cap has cost them several thousand dollars per year for the last two years, and will continue to do so.
So you want to jack up the tax rate on our corporations back up to 35%?! Really? Why would you want to do that? You might want to talk to the millions of employees of those corporations and ask them if they would like to see their employer's taxes jacked up by 40% (14 percentage points). Why would you want to do such a thing? Do you not want American corporations to grow, to hire more people, to keep paying for benefits?
I seriously, seriously doubt that Biden would be so foolish as to undo the Trump tax cuts. He might do what Bill Clinton did to the Reagan tax cuts and what Obama did to the Bush tax cuts, i.e., raise the rate for the top brackets somewhat but leave the tax cuts for the other brackets intact. And I hope to high heaven that, if Biden wins, he doesn't undo the great growth we've seen in our business sector by jacking up the corporate income tax rate back to 35% or to anything close to that.
When I said Biden might reverse things, I was referring to "Trump's cut for the corporations (and the billionaires)".
As many economists have pointed out, taxing corporate income is a counter-productive form of double taxation that negatively affects everyone in each corporation. Corporations already pay half of all of their employees' payroll taxes, in addition to tens of billions of dollars in state income taxes and local property taxes. Even the owners and top executives in corporations already pay taxes on their salaries. So turning around and taxing a corporation again on its profits makes no sense, if you are interested in enabling the company to grow as much as possible.
Corporations worked and competed before the Trump tax cut on corporations.
