Monday, April 18, 2011

PWC: a Misleading View on Corporate Taxes

From the New York Times blogs:

The Business Roundtable, a group comprising 200 of the largest companies in the United States, is out with a “study” that claims to show that the United States levies excessively high tax rates on companies. It actually shows nothing of the kind.

It delves into corporate tax rates, and finds among other things that U.S. corporate taxes are roughly half of what they were in the 1960s, both as a share of all taxes and as a share of GDP. This second number is especially surprising given the rising share of corporate profits in GDP.

It goes on to say:
A real study that looked at how much the companies in the Roundtable actually pay to Uncle Sam would be a wonderful thing
We believe that our friends at Citizens for Tax Justice in the U.S. will be bringing out new information in the summer that will look at exactly that. Watch this space.

Hat tip: Tax Research, highlighting PWC's role in this shambles. (And we are heartened to see comment 5 from someone in Colorado - not from TJN, as far as we can tell.)

Update: see CTJ weighing in on this PWC hogwash.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Think I'll start a corporation. I'll get some income by trading a share of it for cash, and promising to pay those buying that share a portion of what I make. Then where will I get cash to pay my employees, suppliers, local and state taxes? Oh yeah, out of cash from sales. And where do I get the money to pay Federal Corporate income Tax? Oh yeah, same place. Looks like I'll have to add to the price of my product to cover this last item. Of course you, my customers, won't mind that increase. You're all for that big bad old corporation paying income taxes and don't care where it gets the money.

9:40 am  
Blogger Nicholas Shaxson said...

Ah yes, the "tax money just goes up in smoke" argument. No it pays for all those things the corporations need to make their profits.

11:00 pm  

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