Fundamental Tax Reform and Corporate Financial Policy

Abstract

The effects of tax reform on corporate financial decisions help determine whether reform will increase capital formation and simplify the tax system. This paper describes the effects of fundamental tax reform on corporate tax planning and summarizes economists' knowledge of the magnitude of these effects. We analyze both income tax reform, consisting of integrating the corporate and personal income taxes, and moving to a broad-based consumption tax. As prototypes of reform, we use the U.S. Treasury's comprehensive business income tax proposal for income tax reform and the flat tax for consumption tax reform. The critical difference between these reforms is that the consumption tax gives firms immediate deductions for capital outlays instead of the depreciation allowances of the income tax. Tax reform can affect business organizational form, capital structure, and timing decisions. Our major theme is that the two types of reform will have similar effects on business financial decisions because they both in...