Despite crazy rules, America is still a great place to do business

economist.com

20 pointstyn3 comments

From the linked article, But corporate taxes are steep. Federal and state taxes on profits together average 39.3%, the second-highest rate in the rich world.

However, from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/13/business/13tax.html Two out of every three United States corporations paid no federal income taxes from 1998 through 2005, according to a report released Tuesday [August 2008] by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress.

Back to economist: many misunderstand complex disputes, products never launched for fear of litigation, etc...

Time for a legal refactoring. It's gotten so complex it is too costly to maintain.

I'm betting that "two out of three" figure includes pass-through entities like partnerships and S-corps, and corporations that don't have any profits because everything is re-invested in the company (as would be the case in some startups and other organizations bootstrapping themselves from retained earnings). In other words, it's almost certainly misleading.

>Two out of every three United States corporations paid no >federal income taxes from 1998 through 2005

Does this count my LLC (me consulting) with no retained earnings?

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