State Corporate Income Tax Rates and Brackets for 2023 (2024)

Key Findings

• Forty-four states levy a corporate income taxA corporate income tax (CIT) is levied by federal and state governments on business profits. Many companies are not subject to the CIT because they are taxed as pass-through businesses, with income reportable under the individual income tax.. Rates range from 2.5 percent in North Carolina to 11.5 percent in New Jersey.
• Four states—Alaska, Illinois, Minnesota, and New Jersey—levy top marginal corporate income taxA tax is a mandatory payment or charge collected by local, state, and national governments from individuals or businesses to cover the costs of general government services, goods, and activities. rates of 9 percent or higher.
• Eleven states—Arizona, Colorado, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Utah—have top rates at or below 5 percent.
• Nevada, Ohio, Texas, and Washington impose gross receipts taxes instead of corporate income taxes. Delaware, Oregon, and Tennessee impose gross receipts taxes in addition to their corporate income taxes. Some localities in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia likewise impose gross receipts taxes, which are generally understood to be more economically harmful than corporate income taxes.
• South Dakota and Wyoming are the only states that levy neither a corporate income nor gross receipts taxA gross receipts tax is a tax applied to a company’s gross sales, without deductions for a firm’s business expenses, like costs of goods sold and compensation. Unlike a sales tax, a gross receipts tax is assessed on businesses and apply to business-to-business transactions in addition to final consumer purchases, leading to tax pyramiding..

Corporate income taxes are levied in 44 states. Though often thought of as a major tax type, corporate income taxes accounted for an average of just 7.07 percent of state tax collections and 4.04 percent of state general revenue in fiscal year 2021. And while these figures are not high, they represent a substantial increase over prior years. Corporate income taxes accounted for 2.26 percent of general revenue in FY 2020, which is more in line with historical norms.

New Jersey levies the highest top statutory corporate tax rate at 11.5 percent, followed by Minnesota (9.8 percent) and Illinois (9.50 percent). Alaska and Pennsylvania levy top statutory corporate tax rates of 9.40 percent and 8.99 percent, respectively.

Conversely, North Carolina’s flat rate of 2.5 percent is the lowest in the country, followed by rates in Missouri and Oklahoma (both at 4 percent) and North Dakota (4.31 percent). Seven other states impose top rates at or below 5 percent: Colorado (4.40 percent), Utah (4.85 percent), Arizona and Indiana (4.9 percent), and Kentucky, Mississippi, and South Carolina (5 percent).

Nevada, Ohio, Texas, and Washington forgo corporate income taxes but instead impose gross receipts taxes on businesses, which are generally thought to be more economically harmful due to tax pyramidingTax pyramiding occurs when the same final good or service is taxed multiple times along the production process. This yields vastly different effective tax rates depending on the length of the supply chain and disproportionately harms low-margin firms. Gross receipts taxes are a prime example of tax pyramiding in action., disparate impacts on low-margin businesses, and non-transparency. Delaware, Oregon, and Tennessee impose gross receipts taxes in addition to corporate income taxes, as do several states, like Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia, which permit gross receipts taxes at the local (but not state) level. South Dakota and Wyoming levy neither corporate income nor gross receipts taxes, and with the enactment of a budget that includes the multiyear phaseout of its corporate income tax, North Carolina is due to join them by 2030.

Twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia have single-rate corporate tax systems. The greater propensity toward single-rate systems for corporate tax than individual income taxAn individual income tax (or personal income tax) is levied on the wages, salaries, investments, or other forms of income an individual or household earns. The U.S. imposes a progressive income tax where rates increase with income. The Federal Income Tax was established in 1913 with the ratification of the 16th Amendment. Though barely 100 years old, individual income taxes are the largest source of tax revenue in the U.S. is likely because there is no meaningful “ability to pay” concept in corporate taxation. Jeffrey Kwall, professor of law at Loyola University Chicago School of Law, notes that:

Graduated corporate rates are inequitable—that is, the size of a corporation bears no necessary relation to the income levels of the owners. Indeed, low-income corporations may be owned by individuals with high incomes, and high-income corporations may be owned by individuals with low incomes.

A single-rate system minimizes the incentive for firms to engage in economically wasteful tax planning to mitigate the damage of higher marginal tax rateThe marginal tax rate is the amount of additional tax paid for every additional dollar earned as income. The average tax rate is the total tax paid divided by total income earned. A 10 percent marginal tax rate means that 10 cents of every next dollar earned would be taken as tax.s that some states levy as taxable incomeTaxable income is the amount of income subject to tax, after deductions and exemptions. For both individuals and corporations, taxable income differs from—and is less than—gross income. rises.

Notable State Corporate Income Tax Changes in 2023

Several states implemented corporate income tax rate changes over the past year, among other revisions and reforms. Notable changes for tax year 2023 include:

• Arkansas saw its top rate of 5.9 percent drop to 5.3 percent on January 1, due to the enactment of H.B. 1002 in August of 2022 which accelerated previously planned individual and corporate income tax rate reductions.
• Iowa’s three-bracket corporate income tax was consolidated into a two-bracket tax at the start of the year, with the top rate decreasing from 9.8 to 8.4 percent. This was the result of the state meeting revenue triggers at least four years earlier than initially anticipated.
• New Hampshire’s Business Profits Tax (the state’s version of a corporate income tax) rate was lowered from 7.6 to 7.5 percent beginning in 2023 due to the enactment of HB 1221 in June 2022.
• Due to the enactment of HB 1342 in 2022, Pennsylvania saw a rate reduction from 9.99 percent to 8.99 percent on January 1. The rate will continue to decrease by 0.5 percentage points each year until it reaches 4.99 percent at the beginning of 2031.

Additionally, Idaho’s corporate income tax rate was reduced from 6.5 to 6.0 percent retroactive to January 1, 2022, under H0436, adopted last year.