[mookiemookie]

Originally Posted by Platapus

I would be happy if there were no increases in the tax rate, as long as people and corporations actually paid those tax rates.

We can have tax rates of 100% but if there are loopholes and deductions that bring the actual tax I pay down to single digit percentages, the rate is meaningless.

Some complain that the US has the highest corporate tax rate in the universe. But how many corporations actually pay anywhere near that rate?

According to an August 2008 report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO):

"Statutory tax rates do not provide a complete measure of the burden that a tax system imposes on business income because many other aspects of the system, such as exemptions, deferrals, tax credits, and other forms of incentives, also determine the amount of tax a business ultimately pays on its income." In the report, GAO estimated that "[t]he average U.S. effective tax rate on the domestic income of large corporations with positive domestic income in 2004 was an estimated 25.2 percent." Moreover, in June 2007, the Treasury Department concluded: "If the revenue from tax preferences were used to lower the corporate tax rate, the rate could be lowered from 35 percent to 27 percent while producing approximately the same revenue."