The high level of social benefits does appear to be a significant benefit to business.
The KPMG link is somewhat misleading. Specifically, KPMG presents a "corporate tax rate table" which purports to show US corporate tax rates as the highest in the world at 40%. When one clicks on their link & read the fine print, one learns that they calculate this figure by starting with the marginal tax rate on the highest bracket, that is the rate at which reported taxable income over $18,333,333 is taxed, adding in state taxes of from "less than 1% to 12%, averaging approximately 7.5%". KPMG then concludes: "...generally resulting in a net effective rate of approximately 40 percent" (in the U.S.), while KPMG reports Norway to have a 28% corporate tax rate, and the global average to be 24.05%.
KPMG conveniently omits to say is that the Norwegian 28% corporate tax rate is a
flat rate applied from the first krone (not a rate applied only to hypothetical amounts of reported taxable income over $18,333,333, as in their U.S. calculations).
Of greater significance, KPMG omits to point out that their statement that KPMG's conclusion that U.S. corporate tax rates generally result in a "net effective rate of approximately 40 percent", is totally false: The truth, as the
Wall Street Journal, and
Wikipedia, report, is that "At 35%, the United States has the highest
nominal corporate tax in any of the world's developed economies. However, the effective corporate tax rate in 2011 fell to 12.1%, its lowest level since before WorldWar I." (If we were to accept the KPMG figure of "approximately 7.5%" average state corporate income tax to this federal effective rate of 12.1%, we arrive at a combined federal & state effective corporate tax rate of 19.6% in the U.S., compared to the Norwegian 28% and the global average of 24.05%).
It would appear that KPMG has an agenda other than communicating truth.
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