Tax Foundation: U.S. Corporate Taxes Now 50 Percent Higher than OECD Average, by Scott A. Hodge:

Amid rising concerns about the state of the U.S. economy, new data compiled by economists at the OECD shows that for the 17th consecutive year the average rate of corporate taxes in non-U.S. countries fell while the U.S. corporate tax rate stayed the same. As a result, the overall U.S. corporate tax rate is now 50% higher than the OECD average.

The U.S. continues to have the second-highest combined federal-state corporate tax rate among industrialized countries at 39.3 percent. Only Japan has a higher overall corporate tax rate at 39.5 percent. By contrast, the average corporate tax rate among OECD countries has fallen a full percentage point in the past year, from 27.6 percent to 26.6 percent. Ireland’s 12.5 percent corporate tax rate remains the lowest among OECD nations.

The OECD data shows that nine of the 30 OECD member nations have lower corporate tax rates in 2008 than in 2007, including Canada, Germany, New Zealand, Spain, the United Kingdom, Italy, Switzerland, the Czech Republic and Iceland. Germany made the biggest change, cutting its corporate rate 8.7 percentage points from 38.9 percent to 30.18 percent. As a result, Germany fell from having the third-highest overall rate to seventh-highest. France now imposes the third-highest rate of 34.4 percent.

The main recommendation of the study is that if countries want to enhance their economic growth they would do well to move away from income taxes—especially corporate income taxes—toward less distortive taxes such as consumption-based taxes. The key to creating a growth-oriented corporate income tax system is to impose a reasonably low tax rate with few exemptions.