A 64% total tax on corporate profits?: Obama sure knows how to encourage investment

Companies already face a 40% marginal income tax. If they pay out their profits as dividends, Obama wants up to a 40% tax on those dividends. Those two taxes together would imply a 64% total tax on the profits earned by American shareholders. Of course, the total tax won't be that high because firms would immediately stop paying dividends, though I am sure that the Obama administration is assuming that the tax will have no effect on the dividend payout rate. From TVNZ:

President Barack Obama's 2013 election-year budget took investors by surprise with a call for significantly higher taxes on dividends, a major change from his earlier tax proposals and one that will raise the ire of dividend-paying companies.

Households earning more than $250,000 a year would see the tax they owe on dividends rise to a maximum of almost 40% next year, equal to the higher maximum income tax rate set to take effect in 2013. The current top income rate is 35%.

Obama again proposed raising the current 15% long-term capital gains tax rate to 20% for the wealthy. He had earlier also sought to set a 20% tax on dividends. . . .