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Corporate Income Taxes
About This Indicator
What Are Corporate Income Taxes?
Federal taxes on company profits, in billions of dollars at an annual rate, quarterly since 1947 and estimated back to 1929, from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The Federal Reserve's payments to the Treasury are not in it: BEA counts them as dividends, not taxes.
Why Does It Matter?
Its share of federal taxes fell from over a quarter in most of the 1950s to about a tenth by the 1980s. Lower rates explain only part: after the 1986 reform, much profit moved to partnerships and S corporations, taxed as owners' income.
Can Politics Influence Them?
The top rate was 52% from 1952 to 1963 and 21% under the 2017 law, but deductions, credits, and where profits are booked matter as much.
Key Idea
It taxes profits, and profits can shrink far faster than the economy: from mid-2006 to early 2009 collections fell by about two thirds while the top rate held at 35% and GDP in current dollars still grew. So a term's change here says as much about the business cycle it met as about the tax code.
Not Scored
Source: BEA. NIPA Table 3.2 (B075RC).
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