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on Public Finance |
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Issue of 2013‒11‒09
five papers chosen by |
| By: | Savina Princen; Gilles Mourre |
| Abstract: | The paper consists in the proceedings of the workshop organised by the Directorate General for Economic and Financial Affairs held in Brussels on 18 October 2012. Against the background of severe consolidation needs in many EU Member States, the workshop addressed the macroeconomic impact and redistributive effects of consolidation measures on the revenue side, two topics ranking high on the current taxation policy agenda. The proceedings gather together the views of academics, national policy-makers and international institutions expressed during the conference. The presentations and discussions in the first session touched upon the balance between current consolidation measures and their medium-term effects. It also provided insights from macroeconomic modelling to design tax consolidation policy and looked into ways to measure consolidation efforts on the tax side. The second session discussed the best tax bases to be used to safeguard social equity and considered income and capital tax options to make the richest contribute to meeting fiscal adjustment needs. Country-specific presentations showed how tax measures were used for consolidation purposes and looked into various experiences in distributing income through the tax system. |
| JEL: | E62 H24 H26 |
| Date: | 2013–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:euf:ecopap:0502&r=pub |
| By: | Dominika Langenmayr (University of Munich); Andreas Hau fler (University of Munich and CESifo); Christian J. Bauer (University of Munich and CESifo) |
| Abstract: | Heterogeneous firm productivity raises the question of whether governments should pursue `pick-the-winner' strategies by subsidizing highly productive firms more, or taxing them less, than their less productive counterparts. We study this issue in a setting where governments can set differentiated effective tax rates in an oligopolistic industry where firms with two productivity levels co-exist. We show that the optimal structure of tax differentiation depends critically on the feasible level of the corporate profit tax, which in turn depends on the degree of international tax competition. When tax competition is weak and optimal profit tax rates are high, favouring high-productivity firms is indeed the optimal policy. When tax competition is aggressive and profit taxes are low, however, the optimal tax policy reverses and favours low-productivity firms. |
| Keywords: | business taxation, firm heterogeneity, tax competition |
| JEL: | H25 H87 F15 |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:btx:wpaper:1308&r=pub |
| By: | Michael Devereux (Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation); Clemens Fuest (Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW)); Ben Lockwood (Oxford University CBT, CEPR and Department of Economics, University of Warwick,) |
| Abstract: | This paper synthesizes and extends the literature on the taxation of foreign source income in a framework that covers both greenfield and acquisition investment, and a general constraint linking investment at home and abroad for the multinational by introducing a cost of adjustment for the mobile factor. Unless the cost of adjustment is zero, the domestic tax on foreign-source income should always be set to ensure the optimal allocation of the mobile factor between domestic and foreign assets and should follow the classical rules in the literature; national optimality requires the deduction rule, and global optimality requires the credit rule. Only in the zero-cost case does exemption become optimal. Allowances can be set so as to ensure that domestic and foreign asset purchases are undistorted by the tax system: this requires a cash-flow tax on domestic investment in the greenfield case, and a cross-border cash flow tax on foreign investment in both cases. These basic results extend to various extensions of the model. |
| Keywords: | Corporate Taxation, Multinational Firms, Repatriation |
| JEL: | H25 F23 |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:btx:wpaper:1303&r=pub |
| By: | Serena Fatica |
| Abstract: | The working paper investigates the impacts of corporate taxes on the accumulation of different types of capital assets. The paper analyses the effect of corporate taxes on new investment in different types of capital assets in the manufacturing industries of 11 advanced economies over the period 1991-2007. The magnitude of the asset substitution elasticities points to a significant inter-asset distortionary effect induced by differences in the tax-adjusted user cost of capital. Overall, differential taxation leads on average to under-investment in ICT capital and to over-investment in other machinery and equipment compared to a counterfactual benchmark where marginal tax rates are equalized across assets. Once cross-country heterogeneity in corporate taxation is accounted for, the results are more mixed, in terms of both the size and the direction of the distortions. On average, 4 percent of the aggregate capital stock appears misallocated. |
| Date: | 2013–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:euf:ecopap:0503&r=pub |
| By: | Christoph Ernst (ZEW Mannheim); Katharina Richter (University of Mannheim & ZEW Mannheim); Nadine Riedel (University of Hohenheim, Oxford University CBT & CESifo Munich) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the impact of tax incentives on corporate research and development (R&D) activity. Traditionally, R&D tax incentives have been provided in the form of special tax allowances and tax credits. In recent years, several countries moreover reduced their income tax rates on R&D output. Previous papers have shown that all three tax instruments are effective in raising the quantity of R&D related activity. We provide evidence that, beyond this quantity effect, corporate taxation also distorts the quality of R&D projects, i.e. their innovativeness and revenue potential. Using rich data on corporate patent applications to the European patent office, we find that a low tax rate on patent income is instrumental in attracting innovative projects with a high earnings potentialand innovation level. The effect is statistically significant and economically relevant and prevails in a number of sensitivity checks. R&D tax credits and tax allowances are in turn not found to exert a statistically significant impact on project quality. |
| Keywords: | corporate taxation, research and development, micro data |
| JEL: | H3 H7 J5 |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:btx:wpaper:1301&r=pub |