Although my home state of California is often scrutinized for it's heavy corporate tax rate, according to this article from LA Times.com, the burden is no heavier than the national average. In fact, California takes an estimated 4.7% of what businesses produce in taxes, which is the exact same as the national average.
The government take is higher in Alaska (13.8%), New York (5.5%) and Florida (5.3%). Even Texas, known for rolling out the red carpet for business, pocketed more than California — 4.9%.
That's according to an annual study of the tax burdens in all 50 states by the Council on State Taxation, a business-friendly group led by senior executives of Chevron Corp., General Electric Co. and other major corporations.
"California is pretty middle-of-the-pack when it comes to business taxes," said Joseph R. Crosby, the organization's senior director of policy.
Although the state's corporate income tax rate — 8.84% — is among the higher in the nation, its bite is diminished by various tax credits and other measures that have been adopted over the years, including:
• One of the most generous research-and-development tax credits in the nation, allowing businesses to deduct 15% of the amount they increase their R&D funding over a base level. The national median is 6.5%, according to Yonghong Wu of the University of Illinois at Chicago.
• Proposition 13, the 1978 initiative that limits property tax increases to 1% a year until properties are sold, when they are reassessed at the market value. This has slowly shifted the property tax burden from businesses to homeowners, since commercial real estate changes hands less often than residential.