Corporate income tax competition and efficient tax base equalization

Abstract

The literature on tax competition argues that the representative tax system (RTS), which is a standard form of tax base equalization, can internalize interregional externalities due to capital mobility. Although this conventional view holds when per unit tax on capital is imposed, it does not hold when corporate income is subject to tax. This paper proposes an efficient tax base equalization system under which each region’s tax base is evaluated by the average factor return of all regions, not by each region’s factor return (as in RTS). By investigating the nature of externalities arising from non-cooperative tax policy, we explain the workings of our “average-return” tax base equalization system.