Apple and Google are among the many corporations to have argued that America’shigh corporate tax rates discourage companies from bringing offshore profits — and hence jobs — back home to the United States. Yet after considering several decades of historical data on the U.S. corporate tax rate and economic growth, a new policy brief contends that there is no statistical relationship between the two factors.
The brief, by the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, finds that lowering the U.S. corporate income tax rate would not increase the country’s economic growth. Indeed, EPI goes as far as to say there is no evidence to support that the tax rate and economic growth are correlated at all.
The Huffington Post
June 6, 2013
Cutting corporate taxes won’t spur economic growth, according to a research report by issued today by the Economic Policy Institute.
The institute’s director of budget research, Tom Hungerford, found no proof that high corporate taxes negatively affect the economy — and no correlation at all between corporate tax rates and economic growth. He analyzed corporate tax rates and economic growth since 1947.
Corporate taxes have been in the headlines after last month’s outrage that the world’s most valuable tech company Apple Inc. shifted profits to a low-tax offshore tax haven and created offshore entities to avoid paying billions of dollars in U.S. taxes, according to congressional investigators.
Dallas Morning News
June 6, 2013
Just as ACT launched, the progressive Economic Policy Institute released a report showing “no evidence that high corporate tax rates have a negative impact on economic growth.” The report examined the statutory and effective tax rates since 1947, finding that reductions in rates did not produce an accelerating Gross Domestic Product.
The Fiscal Times
June 6, 2013
And we have a pretty good idea, based on careful statistical studies, of where that optimal top rate lies; 73 percent, say Diamond and Saez, maybe 80 percent, say Romer and Romer.
The New York Times
June 6, 2013
Even today, there are good reasons for economic pessimism. Unemployment is still at 7.5 percent. Wages have barely grown at all when you adjust for inflation. And Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute says that, with 2.5 percent economic growth, the country is not exactly rocketing out of its hole.
“We have not seen really rapid job creation,” he says. “We’ve been averaging roughly 175,000 jobs per month. At that pace of growth, you’re looking at sort of a full employment economy not till somewhere around 2020.”
NPR
June 6, 2013
The Economic Policy Institute published an informative paper several weeks ago that broke down a lot of the myths around the STEM shortage.
First, let’s look at basic economics. When there’s a shortage — when demand exceeds supply — the price of a good increases. If there were truly a supply shortage, then, why hasn’t the compensation for tech workers increased dramatically?
Business Insider
June 4, 2013
What’s more, almost half of Americans, 47 percent of us according to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, had no assets at all in 2009.
Washington Monthly
June 4, 2013
Even today, there are good reasons for economic pessimism. Unemployment is still at 7.5 percent. Wages have barely grown at all when you adjust for inflation. And Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute says that, with 2.5 percent economic growth, the country is not exactly rocketing out of its hole.
“We have not seen really rapid job creation,” he says. “We’ve been averaging roughly 175,000 jobs per month. At that pace of growth, you’re looking at sort of a full employment economy not till somewhere around 2020.”
NPR
June 4, 2013
The inaction by Congress to prevent $5.1 billion in across-the-board budget cuts for this fiscal year (sequestration) is hitting five states the hardest: Wyoming, Utah, North Dakota, Montana and South Dakota. These states receive the largest percentage of federal support, according to a report by the Economic Policy Institute. To read more, go to
Billings Gazette
June 4, 2013
Budget cuts to federal grant programs benefiting state and local governments have hit Indiana harder than all but one other state, according to number crunching by the Economic Policy Institute in Washington.
The think tank estimated that Indiana governments are getting $466 million less this year than last year because of the across-the-board cuts known as sequestration and from other reductions in spending programs between 2012 and 2013. Indiana’s 4.2 percent drop was larger than in any state except Louisiana, where funding fell 8.5 percent.
Indianapolis Star
June 4, 2013