The state has an exceptionally progressive tax structure — wealthy people, who disproportionately pay capital-gains taxes, have especially high income-tax rates — and many rich people.
Last month, Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, and Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, proposed new financial transaction taxes for the euro zone, as well as standards for corporate tax laws, so no country could lure businesses at the expense of others with exceptionally low tax rates.
Even with the exceptionally high taxes of last year, over the last five years Accenture paid just 12.1percentt of its profits in taxes, or less than a third the rate for the 100 largest companies with headquarters outside the United States.
Alaska ranks high in disposable income among the states, due to good-paying jobs, exceptionally low taxes and payments from reinvested oil savings.
Yet in a series of meetings over the past two years, more or less, aides have confronted Mr. Putin with evidence that Russia's pre-eminence in the world of oil will not last if the current imposition of exceptionally high taxes on oil companies is left in place over the next decade.
This is because they derive a sizable portion of their profits in resource-rich nations that levy exceptionally high taxes on oil and gas developments.
First there's the exceptionally high tax burden, then there's the strictest gun laws in the nation, and let's not forget about San Francisco and Nancy Pelosi.
Ireland has already had to give up the long tax holidays once offered to incoming investors, but instead it now offers an exceptionally low corporation tax, a mere 12.5% from next year.
But I'd also institute an exceptionally large inheritance tax," Pickett says.
In "Taxes Needn't Discourage Philanthropy" (Economic View, July 29), Robert J. Shiller noted that, despite the supposed disincentive of high marginal tax rates, economic growth was exceptionally strong when income tax rates were far higher than today's.
Taxes are exceptionally low.
