TaxProfBlog: KPMG Corporate Tax Rate Survey

Blog: Dramatic drop in corporate tax

KPMG has released its annual Corporate Tax Rate Survey covering 86 countries:

Since 1993, KPMG has published an annual analysis of corporate tax rates around the world. In our initial survey, the rates from 23 countries were examined. Now, in 2006, the list stands at 86 countries. The survey has recorded a consistent and dramatic reduction in corporate tax rates over that 14-year period. This reduction began in the mid-1980s in the United Kingdom when the government of Margaret Thatcher lowered the corporate tax rate from 52 percent to 35 percent between 1982 and 1986, forcing other countries to follow suit. Once one major industrialized economy cuts its rates, others seem compelled to do the same, in a process of international tax competition that continues and intensifies over time. In the past 14 years, the average corporate tax rate of countries surveyed by KPMG declined nearly 29 percent (28.7), dropping from an average of 38 percent to 27.1 percent.