{"id":53355,"date":"2013-01-17T10:45:34","date_gmt":"2013-01-17T15:45:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.lclark.edu\/hart-landsberg\/?p=1440"},"modified":"2013-01-16T01:38:16","modified_gmt":"2013-01-16T06:38:16","slug":"u-s-tax-rates-in-comparative-perspective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2013\/01\/17\/u-s-tax-rates-in-comparative-perspective\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Tax Rates in Comparative Perspective"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at\u00a0Reports from the Economic Front<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Considering the enormous time spent debating tax policy, it is easy to imagine that the U.S. must have one of the high tax rates in the world. \u00a0Well, that is not the case.<\/p>\n

The Atlantic<\/em> has a great post<\/a> which includes\u00a0Business Insider<\/em> graphs<\/a>\u00a0drawn from a KPMG<\/em> report<\/a> on global tax rates.<\/p>\n

Here is one of them. \u00a0It shows the personal tax rate paid by people making the equivalent of $100,000 a year in 2012. \u00a0The U.S. is the 55th ranked country out of 114 in terms of tax rates.<\/p>\n

\"tax<\/a><\/p>\n

The next graph shows the same thing but for those earning the equivalent of $300,000 a year. \u00a0The U.S. ranking is similar for this upper income group, 53rd\u00a0highest out of 114.<\/p>\n

\"tax<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0Moreover, as Derek Thompson, the author of the Atlantic post, notes:<\/p>\n

But these numbers might understate how low taxes have been in the U.S. Unlike most advanced economies, the U.S. don\u2019t supplement personal income taxes with a national sales tax, or value-added tax (VAT). Consumption taxes accounted for about a fifth of total U.S. revenue in 2008 (mostly at the state and local level) compared to an OECD average of 32 percent. In other words, the U.S. relies uniquely on personal tax rates to raise revenue \u2014 and we have relatively low personal tax rates.<\/p>\n

Finally, here is a look at the U.S. ranking among OECD countries for taxes as a share of GDP in 2008.<\/p>\n

\"The-Numbers-Jan-2012-International_1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

So, given that the U.S. doesn\u2019t seem to be a high-tax rate country, why is tax policy so contentious? \u00a0No doubt the answer has a lot to do with who actually pays the taxes and, perhaps even more importantly, what the revenue is used for.<\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n

Martin Hart-Landsberg is a\u00a0professor of Economics<\/a>\u00a0and Director of the Political Economy Program\u00a0at\u00a0Lewis and Clark College<\/a>. \u00a0You can follow him at\u00a0Reports from the Economic Front<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Considering the enormous time spent debating tax policy, it is easy to imagine that the U.S. must have one of the high tax rates in the world. \u00a0Well, that is not the case. The Atlantic has a great blog post which includes graphs from a Business Insider blog post that are drawn from a KPMG […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1852,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[36,3920],"class_list":["post-53355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-economics","tag-nation-united-states"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1852"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53355"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53355\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53372,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53355\/revisions\/53372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}