In , Bill Sloman wrote in part:
If you want to get more tax money "fat cats", don't you think it would be more direct and efficient to increase taxes on capital gains and dividends instead? Most capital gains and dividends (those on assets held over a year) get tax breaks. Warren Buffet said he pays a lower percentage of his income into taxes than his secretary does.
Meanwhile, corporate taxes puts USA companies lacking lobbyists at a competitive disadvantage against USA ones with lobbyists and foreign companies.
Although USA's corporate tax rate is 35%, percentage of USA corporate profit paid in taxes is much lower. USA corporations paid $191 billion in taxes for the entire year of 2010, while USA corporate profits were about $1.62 trillion. (I had an easier time piecing individual quarter data from different sources than finding a year total or all 4 quarters from the same source. Some sources don't mention clearly that the roughly-$1.6 trillion quarterly figures are annual rates.)
So, the average is 11.8% while the marginal rate is 35%? Looks like lots of exeptions, exemptions, breaks and "tax holidays" for companies with lobbyists, while startups getting profitable have to pay 35%.
How about reduce the rate to 10% and eliminate the breaks? A lot of corporations would be happy, lots of lobbyists will be out of jobs. Companies would find it more important towards their bottom lines to sell goods and services, and less important to do other things like paying lobbyists and working at tax avoidance. My estimate is that this would help the economy enough to actually increase corporate taxes paid.