In 1955, corporate taxes represented over 27 percent of federal revenue; today that figure has dropped to just under 9 percent. Jeff Immelt, the CEO of G.E. and head of the Obama administration's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, commented on his company's tax liability, "we do like to keep our tax rate low," and further explained that corporations "hire armies of tax lawyers to understand how [the tax system] works and to take advantage of the various loopholes that exist that are legal in order to reduce their tax burden."
Just as corporate taxes have fallen, corporate profits have reached record heights. What's more, the richest Americans continually increase their share of the country's wealth. The top 10 percent of earners in the US control almost half of all income. This disparity is heightened by the stark regressivity of state tax structures |