Burman article on corporate tax income published in National Tax Journal
Aug 31, 2017
Is U.S. Corporate Income Double-Taxed?
Leonard E. Burman, Kimberly A. Clausing & Lydia Austin
National Tax Journal, August 2017
Using data from several sources, the authors show that the vast majority of corporate income
is not double-taxed in the United States. They estimate that the taxable share of U.S.
corporate equity has declined dramatically in recent years, from over 80 percent in
1965 to about 30 percent at present. They discuss the causes of these dramatic changes
in the taxable share of corporate stock. Several factors explain the shift, including
changes in retirement finance, demographic changes, changes in the prevalence
of pass-through business organizations, and the increased globalization of capital
markets. These findings are important for the development of corporate tax policy.
Moving the capital tax burden to the individual income tax, as some have proposed,
without reforming tax preferences that currently exempt much corporate equity from
taxation under the individual income tax, would lead to a large revenue loss. These
findings also have implications for other important questions in public economics,
including the measurement of the cost of capital, the importance of capital gains
lock-in effects, the consequences of changes in dividend taxation, and the nature
of clientele effects.