U.S. Corporate Tax Rate Unlikely to Change After Roadblocks Rise in Senate

Given recent political developments around the Build Back Better bill, we are reversing our forecast that the U.S. corporate tax rate will rise to 26% in 2022. We now believe the U.S. statutory tax rate will remain at 21% at least through President Joe Biden’s remaining term, which ends in early 2025. Our equity analysts will incorporate this new U.S. corporate tax rate assumption into their valuation models in the coming weeks. We previously simulated the impact of various tax rate changes on covered U.S. equities; reversing the statutory tax rate assumption to 21% results in a 3% average valuation increase, all else being equal.