Chart of the Week: Corporate Tax Dodgers

It is the beginning of a new week and time to get the economic stuff out of the way more charts! Yes, the US has a high corporate tax rate (35%) compared to other countries, but no CFO worth his bonus money would allow his or her company to pay that:

As a percentage of total corporate profits, corporate income tax paid has been going down since the early 50s. The same trend is visible when corporate taxes are compared to total GDP:

In 2009 Bank of America, actually got a net tax benefit of $2.3 billion while General Electric received $3.2 billion despite profits of over $14 billion; just two examples of the corporate welfare enjoyed by the biggest companies in the nation. Thanks to an unfair tax code corporations kept $222.7 billion in federal tax revenue from 2008 to 2010. Corporatists and TEA party extremists want to blame the federal government for causing the financial panic of 2008 by inflating the real estate market with a lot of deadbeat buyers. But the truth is [video @13:00] the United States real estate market was no more inflated than other countries:

No argument that Freddie and Fannie guaranteed bad loans, but it was because the banking industry wanted it that way. One of the few Washington lobbyists that paid his dues in jail, Jack Abramoff, says, "During my years as a lobbyist, I saw scores of congressional staff members become the willing vassals of K Street firms before soon decamping to K Street employment themselves. It was a dirty little secret, And it is a source of major corruption in Congress." He should know, right?