Punch line: After adjusting for so-called “loopholes” and consolidating all tax returns, U.S. companies (including GE) pay 40% higher income taxes than foreign-based companies.
How do you spell competitiveness?
American businesses have long complained that our 35 percent corporate tax rate — the second-highest in the developed world—makes them less competitive globally.
Critics respond that most U.S. corporations pay much less than that to Uncle Sam — in General Electric’s case, reportedly nothing — because of various loopholes.
The Business Roundtable released a study on the average effective tax rates for the world’s 2,000 largest corporations. The effective tax rate is the share of global pretax income that actually is paid in taxes to various levels of government in the U.S. and abroad.
The study, conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers, found that U.S. corporations paid an average effective tax rate of 27.7 percent from 2006 to 2009, compared with an average of 19.5 percent for foreign-based corporations. The U.S. effective tax rate was the sixth-highest among the 61 countries that are home to large corporations, behind Japan, Morocco, Italy, Indonesia, and Germany.
Thanks to SMH for feeding the lead
The Homa Files 
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