published May 8th 2016, 6:01 pm, by Esteban Duarte

(Bloomberg) —
Russia and the U.K. give companies the lowest effective tax rates among the world’s leading economies, according to a report by UHY, a network of auditors and consulting firms.

Companies in Russia pay corporate tax at 20 percent while in the U.K. it’s 21 percent, UHY said in the study of rates applied to $1 million of taxable profit. The average for Group of Seven nations is 32 percent while across the 31 countries included in UHY’s research it was 27 percent.

U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne called corporate tax “one of the most distortive and unproductive taxes there is” last month when he announced plans to lower the rate to 17 percent by 2020 and said he aims to make British tax rates among the world’s lowest.

Six of the countries assessed by UHY have cut corporate taxes in the past two years while just two, Israel and India, have raised them.

To contact the reporter on this story: Esteban Duarte in Madrid at eduarterubia@bloomberg.net To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alan Crawford at acrawford6@bloomberg.net Ben Sills, Richard Bravo

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