Cato Institute:  Corporate Tax Competitiveness Rankings for 2012, by Duanjie Chen & Jack Mintz (both of University of Calgary, School of Public Policy):

Corporate income tax reform is receiving serious
consideration in Washington. The Obama administration
has suggested reducing the federal corporate tax rate from
35% to 28% while broadening the tax base.
Presidential candidate Mitt Romney has said that he would
cut the corporate tax rate to 25% if elected. …

This bulletin presents new estimates of marginal
effective tax rates (METRs) on corporate investment for
90 countries. We find that the U.S. effective tax rate on new
corporate investment is 35.6% in 2012, which is
almost twice the average rate for the 90 countries studied,
and it is also the highest rate among the major industrial
nations. These results underscore the need for U.S.
policymakers to tackle corporate tax reform.

Effective Tax Rates for 2012
Figure 1 summarizes our corporate tax rate
calculations. The U.S. METR is 35.6% in 2012, or
almost twice the 90-country average of 18.2%. The
average rate for the 34 Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development (OECD) nations is just 19.4%. While the U.S. corporate tax rate has remained
high, the global trend for both statutory and effective
corporate tax rates has been downward.

Table 1 on the next page shows METR calculations for
90 countries, including separate figures for the services
and manufacturing sectors. The United States has the
fourth highest effective tax rate on corporate investment in
the world after Argentina, Chad, and Uzbekistan.

The United States has a high METR, a high statutory
tax rate, and numerous special preferences in its corporate
tax system. This noncompetitive and nonneutral tax
structure is harmful to growth, and it results in relatively
low government revenues because the high rates induce
businesses to shift their investments and profits abroad.