WH clarifies Trump’s ‘highest taxed nation’ claim

by Ben Kamisar - 10/10/17 3:22 PM ET

The White House clarified on Tuesday President Trump’s repeated claims that America is the “highest taxed nation in the world,” arguing he is referring to the nation’s corporate tax rate instead of overall tax rate.

Trump has repeatedly made the claim, which has been proven false by a handful of independent arbiters. When pressed about his comments again on Tuesday, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders weighed in.

“We are the highest-taxed, corporate taxed, in the developed economy. That’s a fact,” she said.

“That’s what he’s talking about. We are the highest corporate taxed country in the developed economies across the globe.”

{mosads}

But while a reporter pushed back by arguing that Trump’s repeated statements aren’t accurate because they’re too broad, Sanders responded that “it seems pretty consistent to me.”

NPR fact-checked the claim back in August, finding that America has the highest statutory corporate tax rates in any nation in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a group of nations with advanced economies.

But as Republicans call for tax reform that lowers the rates on businesses, arguing that lower rates will translate to an economic boost, critics like the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities argue that the statutory rate is not the most accurate metric because few businesses pay that high a rate after deductions.

The group found in a report from earlier this year that the average rate on corporate profits is 24 percent in America, just 3 percentage points higher than other G-7 countries.

Tags