Hmm

A mini-furor over the WSJ's supposed discovery of the Laffer curve last week, pictured above. Brad DeLong, Mark Thoma, probably-Jane Galt, Kevin Drum, Matthew Yglesias, and others have all pointed out the fact that the picture on top is especially dishonest. By drawing their line through an outlier, and then surrounding the rest of the data points inside the bell, the WSJ is portraying something that isn't really there. A better way to draw the line was provided by Thoma, shown second. The conversation eventually veered all over the place, touching on such topics as whether or not to include Norway in the first place, whether or not to include U.A.E., whether or not there was a measurement bias, whether or not sociology is worth a shit, etc.

But what interests me is something not discussed. What does the U.S. have the highest corporate tax rate, but receives less revenue from it, as a % of GDP, than any other country with anywhere near the same rates?

Quick guesses: tax shifting may be involved; Bush's tax "cuts" taxed individuals at lower rates than corporations, so high-income taxpayers shifted their income from businesses to individuals. Or, not all corporations at taxed at the same rates; small businesses pay less, etc. I don't know whether or not this data includes capital gains tax rates, but if so, that could play a role as well.