Oct 02 2017
Corporate Profits Soar While Tax Revenue is Flat
Congressional Republicans want to cut the corporate tax rate to 20 percent, but corporations have already been taking home more of their rising profits tax free. Corporate profits increased by more than 40 percent from 1979 to 2015, relative to GDP, while corporate tax revenue has fallen by more than 30 percent over the same period. Big corporations can lower their corporate taxes using a menu of hard-lobbied deductions and credits and by using accounting tricks to shift their profits to low- or no-tax countries. More than half of U.S. companies’ foreign profits are reported in just seven tax havens.