For corporate taxes, effective tax rate is the relevant number. I could not find recent figures, but most rich countries had an effective tax rate in the 10-20 % rate, with Germany and Australia as outliers (below and above) in 2005. The US (well, states) are known to have a high official corporate tax rate, but the effective tax rate is much lower. In general, corporate taxes have significantly decreased on various measures (http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/11/cor...).
This is actually the main issue of this new law in France: distortions and waste around tax avoidance much more than the actual tax rates, which are mostly for political show (the tax will not raise that much money, even though France has the highest number of people > 1 million euros in assets/etc... within Europe).
This is actually the main issue of this new law in France: distortions and waste around tax avoidance much more than the actual tax rates, which are mostly for political show (the tax will not raise that much money, even though France has the highest number of people > 1 million euros in assets/etc... within Europe).