More taxes collected from Employment than from Corporate Profits

(I am starting a new series today: 28 days of Tax Data where I will be posting each day something I find interesting about the Untied States’ Tax System)

From the Tableau Software blog Ellie Fields posted an analysis last year comparing the amount collected from Employment tax (Social Security, Medicare, Federal Unemployment taxes which are taxed per employee) vs the amount collected from Corporate tax (which is taxed per dollar of profit). This is for the Federal Government only.

The first graph shows that since the 1960s the amount of taxes from employment has increased relative to corporate taxes

The second graph is plotting the % change in the different between employment and corporate taxes collected. As each recession hit (shown as thick lines of red and pink) taxes collected from employment drop faster (i.e. layoffs) than from corporate taxes (less profit).