[fordh]

I was curious and looked up this claim. Turns out PolitiFact looked into it: http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/sep/09/...

The conclusion:

  Bolling said the United States has "the highest corporate tax rate in the free
  world." He was referring to the statutory rate, meaning the rate before
  deductions. On that score, he’s right: The United States does have the highest
  statutory rate among developed countries. However, the United States’ corporate
  tax rate doesn’t appear to be the highest once deductions and other exclusions
  are taken into account.

I found it an interesting article so I decided to share.

[adventured]

The US effective corporate tax rate tends to be 25% to 27% in normal times, which is still one of the highest effective tax rates in the world. The median S&P 500 effective tax rate is 30%, also one of the highest rates in the world.

You often see 12% or 13% bandied about as the effective rate, but that's intentional intellectual fraud: they refer to 2010 numbers, when the US was coming out of the great recession and corporations had lost a ton of money.

[nicolas_t]

There's also some countries that have relatively "low tax rate" but very high social security costs which are not always counted as tax rates by studies.

[seanmcdirmid]

And not all those costs can be credited against US taxes on repatriation, so double taxation scenarios exist.