Recent economic research suggests that colleges siphon off a significant portion of federal education aid rather than lowering costs to students

On Sunday, April 1st  2012 the United States will become the developed country with the highest statutory corporate tax rate.  Japan, the previous ‘champion,’ is set to lower their rates leaving America in the top spot.

The one thing on which our political leaders seem to agree is the need for corporate tax reform. But amid all of the promising rhetoric there is significant cause for concern. Many proposals, particularly those of Messrs. Obama and Santorum, seem to have unlearned many of the lessons of modern economics.

"President Obama's tax proposal to cut the corporate tax rate to 28% would take the US's ranking from last place (34th) to 32nd place. We need more leadership than that to get a truly competitive and pro-growth tax system." – Alex Brill

From the perspective of the corporate profit and loss statement, a trading loss is one expense item in the context of all revenues and expenses. So $2 billion should be compared to the bank's $26.7 billion in pretax profits for 2011, suggesting a reduction of something less than 10 percent in annual profit.

 Everybody knows that an important part of the unsolved problem of our uncompetitive tax system for businesses is the double taxation of corporate dividends.