ThinkProgress links to a new study by Citizens for Tax Justice that shows four industries — financial; utilities, gas and electric; telecommunications; and oil, gas and pipelines — receive more than 50% of all tax subsidies. But pay particular attention to the real tax rate of those companies in this list:
The average effective tax rate of those top four industries is 10.8%. So much for the idea that corporate taxes in the United States are the highest in the world and that this is what is keeping the economy down. In the 1950s, corporate taxes were over 30% of federal revenue. Last year they were less than 9%. Total federal taxes are lower as a percentage of GDP than they have been since the end of WW2 at 14.9% (the average is over 18%), and corporate taxes are only 1.8% — by far the lowest in the industrialized world.
