It is utterly baffling, because certainly the answer couldn't be that U.S. corporations avoid paying tax.
http://www.ctj.org/corpfed04pr.pdf
It is quite a conundrum. A riddle inside a mystery wrapped in an enigma.

I happily avoid (not evade) paying taxes whenever possible, as should corporations. It's our civic duty.

No, the place to look for revenue leakage is Congress, and it's pork. Personally, I'm on board for busting pork, especially agricultural subsidies. Which brings me to the chicanery of CTJ.

Cherry picking corporations out of a pool can prove nearly any point. Couple that with a bias against corporations, imply that corporations EVADE taxation, and then provide the small, itty-bitty, teeny-weeny, disclaimer that nothing illegal has happened, is just bogus. Meanwhile, our noble legislators escape scot free.

Mainly Democrats these days. Come to think of it, I believe Rep Obey has devised a system whereby Democrats can escape the odiousness of voting on pork provisions and just anoint the chosen directly, via the vagaries of conference legislation. Land o'goshen. Too bad stuff like that doesn't interest Glenn.

Shooter forgets, of course, the vital difference between the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and the Israeli invasion of Lebanon: the goals of the invasions.

There's that darn nuance thing again. And that vital difference is.....?

The goal of the U. S. invasion of Afghanistan was to remove the Taliban from power, wipe out Al Qaeda, bring the leaders of those two organizations to justice, and assist the establishment of a democratic republic there.
If Lebanon was comparable, then Israel should have toppled the government of Lebanon. However, the U. S. didn't want that to happen. Why not, shooter?

-- Rufus X

Gee Rufus, you seem to be the expert here, you tell us. Personally, I think Israel would be happy to topple the Lebanese government and annex Lebanon into Israel. But that's just speculation on my part.

So now we have on record that a valid cassus belli is any government "sheltering" a group that attacked us, wipe them both out, bring the leaders to justice, and assist in the establishment of a democratic republic, yes? Still sounds like our situation with Iran to me.

If distinguishing between the "murdering Muslims" is too much of a nuance for you (and, hence, all "murdering Muslims" are Al-Qaeda as far as you are concerned), will you at least acknowledge distinguishing between "murdering Muslims"/Al-Qaeda and the other one billion non-murdering Muslims requires no nuance at all, but is a vital and important distinction to make?

Which part of "Any murdering Muslim (as opposed to a non-murdering Muslim)" is not a sufficient distinction?

I think you'll find that if you agree, once you begin making that distinction, you'll quickly discover the scope of the problem: the so-called "murdering Muslims" are a fantastically small proportion of the larger Muslim population...in much the same way that murdering Christians are an extremely small proportion of the larger Christian population.

Which reality are you claiming membership to? Are there Christian hate crimes I haven't heard about? Did an Episcopalian shoot a Methodist for heresy somewhere? Let's assume for the moment that one can claim that all abortion doctor deaths are religiously motivated. That's all of seven people.
http://www.rickross.com/reference/a-abortion/a-abortion21.html

Meanwhile in the ME, war isn't politics by other means, it's the only means that count. Assuming we aren't talking about Israel. 19 hijackers started all this, what infintisimal percentage is that? Obviously percentages don't really count, do they?

shooter -- the place to look for revenue leakage is Congress, and it's pork

Revenue is on the "income" side of the ledger. Spending, whether on pork, beans, or Vienna sausage, is an "expense." The graph looked at revenue as a percentage of GDP, not the budgetary bottom line. Nice try.

My only point was that corporations don't pay the 35% tax rate depicted in the graph, and so to attempt to draw any conclusion based on completely false data is as pointless as, well, arguing with scooter. -- Valentinian

God help us. I'm sorry, I forget to speak in small sentences and not leave out any important words.

* I should have said TAX "revenue leakage".
* Yes it's on the income side of the Government ledger and would result in the desired INCREASE in AMOUNT of TAX whether against EITHER BUDGET or GDP. It would be a larger figure, as in bigger, more of it.
* The tax revenues aren't larger, bigger, or more of it, because Congress is the one giving out the tax BREAKS. As in less, not as much, smaller.
* To reiterate, (I mean say again) Congress is responsible for who pays taxes, (that's revenues, on the income side of the ledger) and how much. (less or more)
* So to sum it up, if you think corporations should pay more tax, call your local Congressperson not the idiots at CTJ.

Folks, that exhausts my patience. Time for a break.