United Liberty

With Japan lowering its corporate income taxes, the United States reached a not-go-great milestone this week. That’s right, folks, we now have the highest corporate income tax rate in the world. Scott Hodge reports at the Tax Foundation:

It’s official. After eight years of having the second-highest corporate tax rate among industrialized countries, the United States has now assumed the top spot following Japan’s scheduled corporate rate cut on April 1, 2012.  Since 2001, Japan had levied the highest combined corporate tax rate among OECD nations at 39.5 percent, slightly higher than the 39.2 percent combined federal-state rate in the U.S. Japan’s new rate is 38.01 percent, which includes a temporary 10 percent surtax that will expire after 2014.

The attention given to the Japanese rate cut has overshadowed the fact that Great Britain also cut their corporate tax rate on April 1st from 26 percent to 24 percent, and will cut the rate again to 23 percent in 2013. Moreover, on January 1st of this year, Canada cut its federal corporate tax rate from 16.5 percent to 15 percent. Canada’s combined rate is about 26 percent when the average rate of the Canadian provinces is added to their federal rate.