Former President Donald Trump said business leaders and anyone paid to create shareholder value should vote for him or get fired because President Joe Biden wants to hike the corporate tax rate to 28%.
“Business Executives and Shareholder Representatives should be 100% behind Donald Trump! Anybody that’s not should be FIRED for incompetence!” Trump wrote on Truth Social, his social media platform.
The existing 21% U.S. corporate tax rate is part of the larger national tax debate.
Biden’s plan for a 28% rate would reverse part of Republicans’ 2017 tax cuts, putting the U.S. corporate rate back among the highest among major economies. Some Republicans have called for a cut, potentially reducing the rate to 15%.
Trump said last week he wanted to lower the corporate tax rate to 20%. Before the Tax Cut and Jobs Act, the rate was 35%.
The worldwide average statutory corporate income tax rate, measured across 181 jurisdictions, was 23.45% in 2023, according to the Tax Foundation. When weighted by GDP, the average statutory rate was 25.67%.
Democrats have called the 2017 tax cuts a gift to the wealthy. U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-Rhode Island, recently said it was time to change course.
“The Trump tax cuts were a gift to the ultrarich and a rotten deal for American families and small businesses,” he said in a statement. “With their impending expiration, we have a chance to undo the damage, fix our corrupted tax code, and have big corporations and the ultra-wealthy begin to pay their fair share.”
Raising or lowering the corporate tax rate could have major implications for the U.S. economy, federal spending and the national deficit.
Federal projections show that extending provisions of Trump’s 2017 tax cut past their sunset dates would add $4 trillion to the federal deficit over the next decade.
Extending the individual income tax provisions of the 2017 tax act would add $3.3 trillion in primary deficits through 2034, according to the latest figures from the Congressional Budget Office. The CBO report cited estimates from the Joint Committee on Taxation, the nonpartisan tax policy and revenue estimating service for Congress.
Most of the individual income tax provisions of the 2017 tax act are set to expire at the end of 2025. The expiring provisions affect statutory tax rates and brackets, allowable deductions, the size and refundability of the child tax credit, the 20% deduction for certain business income, and the income levels at which the alternative minimum tax takes effect, according to the report.
Increased interest costs would add another $467 billion to the deficit.
