Governments use taxation as a policy instrument to create a favourable business climate in the face of competition from neighbouring countries. Tech companies appear to be bearing the brunt of the blame associated with this geopolitics of tax, even though it is actually governments who set tax...

This paper considers the welfare implications of a tax on real estate transfers. A theoretical analysis shows how the discouragement of mutually beneficial transactions as well as tax-sheltering activities give rise to a welfare loss that can be estimated comprehensively from the empirical...

Qualitative case studies suggest that the outcomes of tax treaty negotiations are determined by power politics and negotiating capability. In contrast, quantitative studies have tended to depart from a model that implies absolute gains, full rationality, and perfect information on the part of...

Im Zuge der Diskussion einer Harmonisierung der Ertragsbesteuerung innerhalb der Europäischen Union wird bereits seit geraumer Zeit die Einführung einer gemeinsamen konsolidierten Körperschaftsteuerbemessungsgrundlage (GKKB/CCCTB) von den Mitgliedsstaaten der Europäischen Union in Erwägung...

Vertical externalities, changes in one level of government’s policies that affect the budget of another level of government, may lead to non-optimal government policies. These externalities are associated with tax bases that are shared or "co-occupied" by two levels of government. Here I...

Die Arbeiten an der Gemeinsamen konsolidierten Körperschaftsteuer-Bemessungsgrundlage GKKB gehen weiter. Allerdings dient der am 28. Januar 2016 von der Kommission veröffentlichte Richtlinienentwurf primär der Einschränkung von als unerwünscht angesehenen Steuergestaltungen. Das...

We study the effects of wealth taxation on reported wealth. Our analysis is based on data for Switzerland, which has the highest rate of annual wealth taxation in the developed world. While the wealth tax base is defined at the federal level, tax rates vary considerably across locations and over...

Do intergovernmental transfers reduce revenues collected by local government authorities (LGAs)? There is already a well-established body of literature in public finance, which argues that intergovernmental grants 'crowd out' local revenues. Most existing studies, however, explore the fiscal...

This paper challenges the view that tax base equalization by the so-called Representative Tax System (RTS) removes inefficient undertaxation in corporate tax competition. The innovation of the paper is that it focuses on a tax on corporate income, instead of the unit tax on capital considered in...

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This book takes a taxpayer's perspective to the relations taxation creates between people and their state. Larsen proposes that in order to understand tax compliance and cheating, we have to look beyond law, psychological experiments and...

Taxation of C corporations -- Funding corporations -- Transfers to a corporation -- Dividend distributions -- Redemption distributions -- Introduction to reorganizations -- Acquisitive reorganizations -- E and F reorganizations -- Divisive reorganizations; Section 355 -- Liquidations --...

Aufgrund der gestiegenen Komplexität der Umwelt ist es für den Gesetzgeber unerlässlich, Experten in die Entscheidungsfindungsphase einzubeziehen, um funktionsfähige Regelwerke zu erstellen. Diese Spezialisten sind in der Theorie in Informationslieferanten und Interessensvertreter zu...

Mit der ab 2020 auch für die Länder geltenden Schuldenbremse verlieren diese die Möglichkeit, in konjunkturellen Normalsituationen neue Kredite aufzunehmen. Dies kann dazu führen, dass notwendige Investitionen beispielsweise in die Infrastruktur unterbleiben. Um das abzumildern, müsste die...

This paper attempts to analytically determine the impact a tax shield (marginal tax rate) has on the value of a levered firm assuming that gains and losses are taxed differently. Previous research has done this by employing empirical methods and simulation studies. We are able to present...

How are optimal taxes affected by the presence of superstar phenomena at the top of the earnings distribution? To answer this question, we extend the Mirrlees model to incorporate an assignment problem in the labor market that generates superstar effects. Perhaps surprisingly, rather than...

This paper discusses trends in capital taxation and the role of the corporate tax rate in a welfare state. It provides a summary of the tax competition literature with special application to capital taxation in small versus large countries. A main finding from this literature is that small...

Key parameters for the modeling of public finances are tax revenue elasticities with respect to tax bases. Yet the existing studies estimating these elasticities for emerging countries disregard the effects of tax reforms on tax revenue, which renders their estimates inconsistent. We use a...

This paper studies the revenue and base effects of local property and business tax hikes using a natural experiment in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW). Due to a reform of the local equalization scheme in 2003, a set of municipalities in NRW increased their local tax rates by one...