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.

On Wednesday 8, 2012, the House Committee on Ways and Means held a testimony on "The Interaction of Tax and Financial Accounting on Tax Reform." Here, Aparna Mathur contributes to their discussion.  

April 1 may be a day for jokes, but on Sunday Japan ceded to the United States a distinction that is no laughing matter: the highest combined statutory corporate tax rate (state, local, and federal) in the developed world.

President Obama’s budget speech on Monday expanded on the theme of economic “fairness,” like his State of the Union speech in January. He lectured Americans that if critical steps are not taken, the rise of the middle class will be threatened and disparities between the rich and the rest will...

Tax reform perpetually tops policymakers' lists for ways to grow the economy, but a generation has passed since the last successful effort, the Tax Reform Act of 1986. This is because of a simple political reality-it's hard. But not, I believe, impossible.

The United States has not cut its corporate tax rates since 1993 and has been left behind while the rest of the developed world races to cut rates and attract investment. To promote economic growth, help workers and increase revenues, we need an "effective" tax reform sooner rather than later.

In December 2010, the President's Fiscal Commission failed to garner the necessary supermajority to pass its plan to reduce the deficit. Now, with the super committee, starting work on its effort to propose $1.5 trillion in deficit reductions, some have speculated that history is about to repeat itself. However, a closer examination reveals a night-and-day difference.

House Republicans have broken the hugely successful spectrum auction authorization first effected in 1993 and also delayed for many years any possibility that digital broadcast spectrum that is almost entirely unused can be repurposed to serve the growing demands for wireless broadband.