Sonya Jackson
Associate Principal Scientist with 20 years experience in drug discovery and development.
Currently sudying Data Science at UoE
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Case Study: Exploring Corporate Tax Rate Variation in the USA
Task
Explore the article by Mike Bostock titled ‘Across U.S. Companies, Tax Rates Vary Greatly’ from The New York Times, and consider the questions below.
Consider the following questions/ideas:
- Variation of corporate tax.
- What types of companies pay less tax and high tax?
- Why some companies pay less tax than others?
- Any interesting discoveries.
Response
Whilst the average effective tax rate is 29.1%, it can be seen by hovering over the bubbles that make up the visualisation that tax rates vary considerably, with some companies paying no tax and others paying more than 60%. Most companies pay less than 45%.
Splitting the view by industry shows that utilities and information technology companies generally pay less tax, whilst retailers, energy and insurance companies appear to pay high tax, however it should be noted that the average figure for insurance companies is skewed due to one outlier and that most insurance companies paid taxes near or below the average.
Larger companies may lower taxes by placing resources in countries with reduced tax rates; however, this effect is less apparent within the energy and retailer sectors. Companies whose main assets can be easily located in cheaper overseas regions (e.g. IT companies) can also effectively reduce their tax bill.
Despite this, with most industries a wide spread of effective tax rate is seen across different companies, and some companies have reported effective tax rates above 100%, the reasons behind these observations are not clear from the link provided.
Learnings and Reflections
Appropriate data visualtasion tools can simplify large data sets, enabling intuiuve exploration of data to reveal pattern trends and answer complex questions.
When designing graphs, careful consideration of questions at hand and the decision that will be made from this information is imperitive in order to design the right visualisation.
References
Bostock, M et al. (2013) ‘Across U.S Companies, Tax Rates Vary Greatly’, The New York Times, 25 May. Available at: https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/05/25/sunday-review/corporate-taxes.html (Accessed: 24 October 2025).