Category: Taxes

The right-wing canard that corporations are buckling under high corporate taxes has always been misleading. Although the U.S. has a 35% corporate tax rate, few if any corporations actually pay that statutory rate. In reality, the United States has the second lowest ratio of corporate tax revenues to GDP in the entire 34-country OECD. In… Continue reading Corporate taxes at record low, profit margins at record high

The New York Times ran a piece about some of the hurdles facing the adoption of President Obama’s new tax rule dubbed the Buffett Rule. The idea for the Buffett Rule comes from the fact that investors who make their money primarily through capital gains pay much lower tax rates than a great number of… Continue reading The complicated and confusing Buffett Rule

The Internal Revenue Service released a report on how much revenue the government misses out on due to illegally unpaid taxes. According to their estimates, the figure for 2006 was around $450 billion, with 17 percent of taxes going unpaid. Around $65 billion of the unpaid taxes are recovered through enforcement, leaving a net tax… Continue reading Congressional under-funding of IRS costs the government $385 billion

I somehow summoned the energy necessary to watch the New Hampshire Republican debate on Saturday. Like the seemingly dozens of GOP primary debates held so far, the usual trainwreck transpired. Jon Huntsman spoke in Chinese briefly to try to show how much he knew about China, not realizing that the nationalists in the Republican party… Continue reading Effective corporate tax rates are not that high