Following up on this morning’s post, U.S. Corporate Tax 50% Higher Than Worldwide Average:  today’s Wall Street Journal has an editorial, America the Uncompetitive:

The new international tax rankings are out for 2008, and congratulations to Washington, D.C., are again in order. Our political class has managed to maintain America’s rank with the second highest corporate tax rate in the world at 39.3% (average combined federal and state). …

America now has the worst of all worlds: high corporate tax rates, but also lots of loopholes passed by Congress at the behest of favored businesses to avoid the confiscatory rate. This imposes huge compliance costs as businesses scramble to exploit the loopholes, with the result of less revenue for the government. …

To correct this revenue dearth, Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress are proposing to pry more tax money out of U.S. companies that have profitable affiliates outside the U.S. Mr. Obama is also shamelessly taking the Byron Dorgan line that the problem is venal U.S. CEOs rather than the nutty U.S. tax code. …

John McCain has proposed cutting the 35% federal corporate tax rate to 25%. That’s a good start, but even that would leave the U.S. with a combined state and federal rate nearly five percentage points above the global average. …

Every month that goes by without tax reform, America is a relatively less attractive place to do business. Over the past 18 months, nine of the 30 most developed nations and 20 countries world-wide — from Israel to Germany to Turkey — have cut their corporate tax rates. Nations are slashing rates to attract capital and jobs from the U.S., and the tragedy is that our politicians keep making it easy for them.