Corporate Tax Revenue by Year: GDP Share, TCJA, and Profit Shifting

Federal corporate income tax revenue by year has climbed in nominal dollars from $225.2 billion in 2020 to $491.7 billion in 2024, but measured against the size of the economy it sits far below its mid-century high. Corporate tax collections peaked at 3.9 percent of GDP in 1966 and stood at roughly 1.6 percent of GDP in 2023.¹ As a share of all federal receipts, the corporate income tax has fallen from 23 percent in fiscal 1960 to about 11 percent in fiscal 2024.²

Recent Year-by-Year Corporate Tax Receipts

Bureau of Economic Analysis data, published through the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, tracks federal corporate income tax receipts through the recent business cycle:

2020: $225.2 billion, depressed by the pandemic recession.
2021: $335.5 billion, as corporate profits rebounded sharply.
2022: $411.7 billion, lifted by inflation and strong capital gains realizations.
2023: $426.5 billion, as the post-pandemic surge began to normalize.
2024: $491.7 billion.³

Quarterly figures for 2025, reported at seasonally adjusted annual rates, ran between roughly $469 billion and $509 billion through the first three quarters.⁴ As of late April 2025, cumulative corporate income tax receipts for the fiscal year were essentially on pace with Congressional Budget Office projections, with $216.6 billion collected against an expected $217.1 billion.⁵

For fiscal-year figures stretching back to 1934 and forward through budget projections to 2031, the Office of Management and Budget publishes the definitive series in Table 2.1, “Receipts by Source.”⁶

The Long Decline as a Share of GDP

Nominal dollar figures rise with the size of the economy, so the more revealing measure is corporate tax revenue as a share of GDP. On that measure the trend has moved in one direction for most of the postwar period. The 1966 peak of 3.9 percent of GDP gave way to a slow erosion, and by 2018, the first full year after the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act reduced the statutory rate from 35 percent to 21 percent, federal corporate tax revenues had fallen to just 1.0 percent of GDP.⁷ Collections recovered somewhat afterward but stayed well below historical norms, reaching about 1.6 percent of GDP by 2023.¹

The Congressional Research Service attributes the decades-long slide to several forces: repeated reductions in statutory rates, more generous depreciation rules, a shift toward pass-through business structures that are taxed under the individual code rather than the corporate code, and international profit shifting by multinational corporations.¹

Shrinking Share of Total Federal Revenue

Corporate income taxes have also lost ground as a share of what Washington collects overall. In fiscal 1960, they accounted for 23 percent of all federal receipts. By fiscal 2024, that share was 11 percent. Payroll taxes surpassed corporate taxes as a revenue source in 1966 and have stayed ahead ever since.²

As of fiscal 2025, individual income taxes made up about 51 percent of federal revenue, payroll taxes about 33 percent, corporate income taxes about 9 percent, and excise taxes, customs duties, and other sources the remaining 7 percent.⁸

What Changed the Numbers

The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act

No single law reshaped corporate tax revenue in recent decades more than the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, signed in December 2017. It permanently cut the top statutory corporate rate from 35 percent to 21 percent and overhauled the international tax system.⁹ A Government Accountability Office study found that the average effective tax rate for profitable large corporations dropped from 16 percent in 2014 to 9 percent in 2018, and total corporate tax liability fell from $278 billion in 2017 to $267 billion in 2018 despite a growing economy. About half of all large corporations had no federal income tax liability in any given year from 2014 to 2018, and among those that were profitable, roughly 25 percent still owed nothing.¹⁰

The Pandemic Surge and Its Reversal

Collections surged in fiscal 2021 and 2022 as stock and real estate prices generated record capital gains and inflation pushed nominal profits higher. Total federal revenue hit 19.3 percent of GDP in fiscal 2022, one of the highest levels on record. The surge was short-lived. In fiscal 2023, total federal revenue fell to 16.5 percent of GDP, and corporate income tax revenue specifically declined by $24 billion.¹¹ Contributing factors included the normalization of stock markets, inflation indexing in the tax code, and increased use of pandemic-era credits like the Employee Retention Credit.

The Inflation Reduction Act’s Corporate Minimum Tax

The Inflation Reduction Act, signed in August 2022, introduced a 15 percent corporate alternative minimum tax on book income for corporations that average more than $1 billion in annual financial statement income over three years. The Joint Committee on Taxation estimated about 150 companies would be subject to the tax each year, generating $222 billion in revenue over a decade.¹² Early results suggest collections have fallen far short. A review of 2024 public company disclosures found only 15 companies disclosed paying the tax, with just five reporting specific amounts totaling $572 million, more than a 90 percent shortfall against the JCT’s $34 billion projection for that year.¹³ The analysis relied on public disclosures and some companies may have paid without reporting it as a material item, but the gap is striking.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025

On July 4, 2025, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act was signed into law. The CBO and JCT estimated its tax provisions would reduce revenues by $3.67 trillion over 2025–2034.¹⁴¹⁵¹⁶¹⁷ The overall reconciliation package added roughly $700 billion in corporate tax reductions over the decade, leaving corporate receipts about a full percentage point of GDP below their pre-2017 levels.⁸

How U.S. Corporate Tax Collections Compare Internationally

The United States collects significantly less in corporate tax revenue relative to GDP than most other advanced economies. In 2022, the OECD average was 3.9 percent of GDP; the U.S. figure was roughly 1.7 percent.¹⁸⁹ As a share of total government revenue, U.S. corporate taxes accounted for 8.3 percent in 2023, compared with an OECD average of 11.9 percent. Some countries lean harder on the corporate tax, including Colombia at 32.3 percent, Norway at 28.3 percent, and Australia at 21.8 percent; others rely on it less, such as France at 5.3 percent and Germany at 6.1 percent. One structural factor in the comparison: the United States is the only OECD country without a value-added tax, raising just 16.8 percent of revenue from consumption taxes versus the 31.1 percent OECD average.¹⁹

Why the Totals Stay Low: Profit Shifting

A meaningful share of potential corporate tax revenue never reaches the Treasury because multinational corporations shift profits to low-tax jurisdictions. A 2016 study calculated the annual U.S. revenue loss at $111 billion for the year 2012 alone, with the annual loss estimated between $94 billion and $135 billion by 2016. Globally, profit shifting was estimated to cost non-haven governments approximately $340 billion per year.²⁰

The concentration is extreme. Eighty-two percent of the estimated U.S. revenue loss was attributed to profit shifting to just seven jurisdictions: Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Singapore, and Ireland. And 98 percent of the loss resulted from shifting to countries with corporate tax rates below 15 percent.²⁰ The scale of the problem grew fivefold over the decade preceding that study.

1
Congress.gov. Congressional Research Service: Corporate Tax Revenue
2
Bipartisan Policy Center. What Kinds of Revenue Does the Government Collect
3
Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (FRED). Federal Government Tax Receipts on Corporate Income
4
Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (FRED). Taxes on Corporate Income
5
Penn Wharton Budget Model. Tax Collections Remain Strong in 2025 Despite IRS Concerns
6
White House Office of Management and Budget. Historical Tables
7
Tax Policy Center. How Do US Corporate Income Tax Rates and Revenues Compare to Other Countries
8
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Where Does Federal Tax Revenue Come From
9
Tax Policy Center. How Does the Corporate Income Tax Work
10
U.S. Government Accountability Office. Corporate Income Tax: Effective Rates Before and After 2017 Law Change
11
Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. 2023 Revenue Plunge Confirms 2022 Surge Was Fluke
12
USAFacts. How Will the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 Change Corporate Taxes
13
Tax Notes. Corporate AMT Raises Little Revenue
14
Congressional Budget Office. Cost Estimate for H.R. 1, One Big Beautiful Bill Act
15
Tax Policy Center. 2025 Tax Cuts Tracker
16
Tax Foundation. Big Beautiful Bill International Tax Changes
17
Tax Policy Center. Why 2025 International Tax Changes Matter
18
OECD. Corporate Tax Statistics 2025 – Corporate Tax Revenues
19
Tax Foundation. OECD Tax Revenue by Country
20
Washington Center for Equitable Growth. The Effect of Profit Shifting on the Corporate Tax Base