Complete elimination of the corporate income tax would boost the American economy by 6 percent in the long run — enough to raise other tax revenues and, over time, make the tax cut revenue-neutral.
The government would immediately lose $273.5 billion in annual corporate tax revenue if the tax were eliminated. But within roughly ten years, income, payroll, and other tax revenues would rise by an annual $273.9 billion as a result, according to the Tax Foundation.
As the above graph shows, the more the corporate income tax rate is cut, the higher economic growth rises. Increasing the corporate tax rate would hurt economic growth and might actually cost tax revenue. Every corporate income tax cut would boost revenue, with the highest revenue boost at about a 20 percent tax rate. However, a 20 percent tax rate would only boost economic growth by 3 percent, whereas eliminating the corporate tax would boost growth by 6 percent.
Without a corporate income tax, the cost of capital would be lower, increasing investment and boosting economic growth in the long run. It would also remove incentives for corporate avoidance tactics such as inversions, and encourage companies to reinvest profits earned abroad in the United States. The resulting new jobs and higher pay would boost individual income tax revenue by $175 billion, and payroll tax revenue by $80 billion, without any increase in tax rates.
The analysis shows the importance of using dynamic scoring to find the revenue effects of tax reform. Tax changes can have large economic effects in the long run that are ignored by traditional static scoring.
