Maybe you should be comparing effective tax rates and not statutory rates.
> "Comparisons of corporate tax rates should focus on the measures that reflect what companies actually pay, not the top statutory rate. Proponents of slashing the corporate tax rate often note the U.S. statutory tax rate is the highest among developed countries. But many U.S. companies use an array of targeted tax breaks and loopholes to significantly lower the taxes they pay. These include tax subsidies for certain types of investments (such as in research and development) and for particular industries (such as oil and gas).
The Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that in 2016, while the corporate income tax raised $300 billion in revenues, targeted subsidies delivered to companies through the corporate tax code cost about $270 billion. As a result of these subsidies and other tax avoidance measures, many large U.S. companies pay very low rates. For example, Pfizer paid a rate of about 7.5 percent on its $12 billion in worldwide pre-tax income in 2014. Studies generally also find that U.S. companies’ tax rates vary widely by industry and type of investment."
I was basing my comment on the (former) effective tax rate of the US, which was previously high across the board.
The former effective US corporate income tax rate, for all corporations, was higher than Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark's statutory rate.
The effective rate for the S&P 500 was higher than the statutory rate for Finland, Sweden, and comparable to Denmark. And that's for the elite of the elite of tax avoiding companies. eg:
"The average effective tax rate among S&P companies that had posted calendar fourth-quarter results as of Friday was 24.11 percent"
"The United States’ corporate tax ranks relatively high on all three measures [among the G20]. The U.S. has the highest statutory rate (39.1 percent), the third highest average effective tax rate (29 percent), and the fourth highest marginal effective tax rate (18.6 percent)."
Talking about "effective tax rate" with regards to multinational tax-avoiding corporations is basically gibberish.
You can't use taxes paid as a percentage of revenue because it's meaningless. A retailer with a 3% profit margin would have a ~1% effective tax rate because 97% of their revenue goes to tax-deductible expenses.
But if you use taxes paid as a percentage of profit then you're not counting any of the tax avoidance, because the way international tax avoidance works is to shift profits to sister companies in other countries instead of the one with a high nominal tax rate.
> "Comparisons of corporate tax rates should focus on the measures that reflect what companies actually pay, not the top statutory rate. Proponents of slashing the corporate tax rate often note the U.S. statutory tax rate is the highest among developed countries. But many U.S. companies use an array of targeted tax breaks and loopholes to significantly lower the taxes they pay. These include tax subsidies for certain types of investments (such as in research and development) and for particular industries (such as oil and gas).
The Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that in 2016, while the corporate income tax raised $300 billion in revenues, targeted subsidies delivered to companies through the corporate tax code cost about $270 billion. As a result of these subsidies and other tax avoidance measures, many large U.S. companies pay very low rates. For example, Pfizer paid a rate of about 7.5 percent on its $12 billion in worldwide pre-tax income in 2014. Studies generally also find that U.S. companies’ tax rates vary widely by industry and type of investment."
https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-tax/actual-us-corporat...