Republicans like John Thune and Kristi Noem like to rant about how America’s corporate taxes are the highest in the world and that if we only would cut them we could jump start the economy and create jobs.
It’s a great political line. It also happens to be untrue.
Recent tax figures released for 2011 indicate that the corporate taxes as a percentage of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of this country were 1.2 percent or $180 billion dollars last year. That is as low a percentage America corporations have paid since the beginning of the industrial revolution.
Indeed, research shows that our corporate tax rate last year in terms of taxes paid by corporations in America was approximately 12 percent not the 35 percent myth that Republicans would like to have Americans believe. That 12 percent is a stunningly low number and one that places American corporations’ tax burden well below those of most all the industrialized countries in the world. That is a fact and no amount of rhetoric can change that.