The Incredible Shrinking Corporate Tax Bill

The second quarter of 2017 was another good one for corporate profits in the U.S. By one of the several measures tallied by the Bureau of Economic Analysis in its gross domestic product report last week, those profits poured in at an annualized rate of $2.27 trillion before taxes and $1.79 trillion after.1504193729671 Neither of those quite match the all-time records set over the past three years, but they're not far off.1504214765119

When you measure profits as a share of GDP and look back as far as the available data will take you, though, the picture is different. Pre-tax profits aren't anywhere near a record, are about as high as they were for most of the 1940s and 1950s, and are not far above the highs of the 1960s and 1970s. After-tax profits, on the other hand, have for most of the past decade-plus been markedly higher than at any time since 1929, when the top corporate income tax rate was just 11 percent.