“After eight years of having the second-highest corporate tax rate among industrialized countries, the United States has now assumed the top spot following Japan’s scheduled corporate rate cut April 1, 2012,” the Tax Foundation announced last week. The U.S. combined corporate federal and state rate is 39.2 percent. Second-place Japan’s 38.0-percent includes a temporary 10 percent surtax that will expire after 2014, further widening the gap.

Let’s hear it for the U.S.A.! We’re No. 1!

If you were bothered by reaching the top of that ignoble list, the next news should ratchet up your irk index. Tax Freedom Day, the date representing the point each year when Americans have earned enough to pay all their taxes and begin earning money for themselves, won’t be reached this year until April 17, says the Tax Foundation, which calculates the date based on workers’ current 29.2-percent federal, state and local taxes. That’s four days later than last year.

It’s worse in California, where Tax Freedom Day won’t arrive until April 20.