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Beat the Press: Washington Post Misleads Readers to Push for Lower Corporate Tax Rates (8/17/08) by Dean Baker
Well aware that, as he puts it, "the Washington Post editorial page has no qualms about making up data to further its agenda," Baker still is compelled to correct its August 17 assertion that "U.S. companies operating abroad already labor under a bigger tax burden than most foreign competitors":
That's not what the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development says. Data from the OECD show that in the average member country corporate taxes are equal to about 3.5 percent of GDP. In the United States, corporate taxes have generally been between and 1.5 percent and 2.5 percent of GDP over the last two decades, according to the Congressional Budget Office (Table F-4).
It's no surprise these facts find no home in Post commentaries—the paper's editors being so aware that, in Baker's words, "the preferred policy is further reductions in corporate income taxes."
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