Do Corporate Taxes hurt growth?

There was an interesting little blog by Dylan Matthews on the wonderful Wonkblog at the Washington Post back in June on some research by Thomas Hungerford at the Economic Policy Institute. Hungerford argues in his paper that corporate taxes do not hurt growth.

Here’s one of the relevant graphs:

However, as Matthews writes

One issue with this chart that emerges immediately is that it doesn’t control for any non-corporate tax factors that might affect economic growth, such as population growth, federal spending, Fed policy or the population’s education level. All it shows is that changes in the corporate tax rate do not drive changes in economic growth, not that the rate does not affect growth. Everyone should agree to that much; I don’t think there’s ever been a recession prompted by a sudden uptick in the corporate tax rate.

Matthews then goes through some of the countervailing evidence.

Interesting little blog anyway.