The United States imposes one of the highest federal corporate income taxes in the world, enticing corporations to outsource where more favorable tax rates lie. Will lowering this corporate tax rate help bring back those jobs to the U.S. and decrease the growing unemployment rate? Some argue yes, while other experts say no. While we argue both sides of this topic, the goal of this paper is to leave you, the reader, with enough facts to form your own opinions to the above question.
How The Income Tax Came To Be
In order to learn how the current corporate tax rates came to exist, we must first look at the history of the income tax. Although the Revenue Act of 1894 established the principle of taxing corporations separate from their owners, a federal tax on corporate income was never imposed until 1909. The Revenue Act levied a 2% income tax on any incomes totaling more than $4000 in order to make up the lost federal revenue (Dierdrich 2011). In the next year, the U.S. Supreme Court deemed the Act unconstitutional saying it was not allocated according to the population size of each state. How did Congress work around this? With the same principles in mind that lie within the Revenue Act of 1894, Congress passed the Corporation Excise Tax Act in 1909 (2013). Apart from its predecessor, this Act imposed a 1% tax on corporate income totaling more than $5000 (Tax Foundation 2013); however, it wasn’t until 1913 and the creation of the 16th amendment, which allows Congress to levy an income tax not apportioned to the population of each state, that removed all questions of the income tax being unconstitutional.
Lowering the income tax will not create jobs
The unemployment rate has a direct correlation to the corporate tax rates. History has shown with higher tax rates unemployment can reach an ultimate low. Back in 1951, the corporate income tax rate jumped from 42%