The Tax Foundation has released U.S. Personal Income Tax Rates: How Do We Compare in the OECD, and Where Are We Going?, by Chris Atkins:

The U.S. is routinely described as one of the lowest tax jurisdictions in the industrialized world, but a Tax Foundation comparison of top individual income tax rates calls this conventional wisdom into question. Currently, 9 OECD countries (including 4 members of the European Union) have lower top marginal rates for individuals than the United States, and more than half of all OECD nations have lowered their rates since 2000.

Lawmakers in the House and Senate approved budget resolutions this year that allow for the 2001 tax cuts to expire, and some are considering imposing surtaxes on the top individual tax rate as part of an AMT reform package. Tax Foundation research shows that the combination of the two proposals would push the top marginal tax rate in the U.S. up to 49.49%, giving us the 9th highest top marginal rate in the OECD (ahead of Canada, Germany, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, among others).

The U.S. already has the second-highest combined corporate income tax rate in the OECD. Only Japan’s is higher. Since many U.S. businesses are not large, publicly-held corporations but small or medium- sized business that pay their taxes through the individual income tax system (often at the top marginal rate), a high individual income tax rate will stunt our economic growth by increasing the cost of employing labor in the U.S., impeding entrepreneurship and innovation, and harming the international competitiveness of many small and medium-sized U.S. businesses.