In the United States, for instance, the top federal income tax rate on capital gains and dividends paid by domestic and qualified foreign corporations is 20 percent, compared to 39.6 percent for ordinary income in 2013. In fact, the recognition that corporate profits are taxed twice was one of the key arguments put forward for reducing dividend taxation in 2003.2
The 2003 dividend tax cut was originally set to expire in 2009 but has now been made permanent (Yagan 2014). In a similar vein, in Canada, Australia, and Mexico, when profits are paid out to shareholders as dividends, all corporate taxes previously withheld are credited against the amount of personal income tax owed. Until recently, many European countries had a similar imputation system. However, most of them now have adopted an approach similar to that of the United States: France stopped crediting corporate taxes in 2005, as did Germany in 2001 (for details of how high-income countries have taxed corporate profits since 1981, see OECD
2013