Finance Geek

Barack Obama’s election has elicited debate about whether he will drive America toward a European-style economy, one that is heavy regulated and relies on high taxation of the rich to redistribute income and finance generous government programs.

How ironic, then, that Europe itself is moving away from European-style taxation as part of a broader trend by developed and developing countries to compete more extensively for capital and talent. In the past five years alone, 33 countries, including 20 in Europe, have cut their top personal income tax rates, according to a study released just before the U.S. presidential election (and predictably ignored in the U.S. media) by the accounting firm KPMG International. Even more impressively, in the past four years, 60 countries have cut their corporate income tax rates, according to a World Bank survey.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 19th, 2008 at 12:04 pm and is filed under RealClearMarkets. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.