Corporate Tax Reform: Taxing Profits in the 21st Century

Profits and Profit Tax, by the NumbersVolatile, Unstable, and Closely Watched

It is often said that the corporate tax is on the way out. How can it possibly survive? It is obsolete. Great leaps forward in globalization and financial innovation have made it difficult to justify and impossible to collect. Well, somebody ought to tell the folks over at the Treasury Department. Over the next decade the federal government plans to collect over $400 billion a year in corporation tax—about 10 percent of total federal revenue.

Up until now, the previous record for annual corporate tax receipts was the $370 billion collected in 2007. This was an unexpected ...