Three lies about taxes 
Poor people don’t pay taxes. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ Chuck Marr and Brian Highsmith provide the definitive takedown of this myth.
The U.S. suffers from high taxes. As measured in terms of total tax revenue as a share of overall GDP the average tax burden for countries that are members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in 2008 was 44.8 percent. The U.S. — 26.1 percent. The U.S. pays less taxes, as a share of GDP, than Denmark, Sweden, Italy, Austria, France, Netherlands, Germany, United Kingdom, Canada, Spain, Switzerland and Japan.
U.S. corporations are over-taxed. Actually, as measured in terms of share of GDP, the U.S. has the lowest corporate tax burden of any OECD nation. While the official tax bracket may seems high — 35 percent — if one takes into account various loopholes and tax dodges, the effective tax rate is considerably lower, or around 27 percent, which comes in as slightly higher than average for OECD members. And according to ace tax report David Cay Johnston, the bigger you are, the less you pay — the effective tax rate for the biggest U.S. corporations is only about 15 percent.
(via jonathan-cunningham)
#taxation #politics #corporations #wealth
