Business Tax Rates Research Articles

Reimagining the Deduction for Employee Compensation

U.S. businesses pay trillions of dollars in employee compensation, a substantial fraction of which is deductible for tax purposes. This deduction reduces the taxable income of businesses, ultimately lowering business tax burdens by hundreds of billions of dollars. With a few exceptions, the tax code confers the same deduction to a business for every dollar of employee compensation, regardless of whether that compensation goes to an employee earning millions or an employee earning minimum wage. This is consistent with a pure Haig-Simons income tax, under which any business expense incurred ought to be deductible dollar-for-dollar. But many, if not most, tax policy objectives are inconsistent with a pure income tax, and the U.S. tax code is accordingly replete with substantial deviations from a pure income tax. This Article considers what would happen if the deduction for employee compensation also deviated from a pure income tax. It finds that allowing employers larger deductions for compensation paid to low-wage workers would counteract persistent deficiencies in the U.S. labor market. A larger deduction for low-wage workers would incentivize businesses to both hire more low-wage workers and pay them more. This would decrease the number of workers earning paltry wages, reverse the decline in U.S. labor force participation, restrain the employer market power exerted in many local labor markets, and correct the negative externalities from low-wage work. As part of its analysis, this Article considers how a larger deduction for low-wage compensation might be funded, focusing on funding sources that synergize with a larger compensation deduction for low-wage workers—including higher business tax rates and smaller deductions for high-wage workers—and it details the tradeoffs associated with these different policy options. This Article also explains why behavioral frictions may make an employer-side subsidy a more effective labor market intervention than an employee-side subsidy, such as the earned income tax credit (EITC).

Management and Research of Enterprise Tax Planning under the Background of Information Age

With the improvement of the tax law and the increase in the cost of tax evasion, taxpayers’ legal awareness is getting stronger and stronger. This article mainly discusses the management of corporate tax planning under the background of the information age. Use data mining technology to achieve diversification of access methods and transparency of information access. If the company responsible for sales is located in a country or region that levies high income taxes, in this case, in order to reduce the tax burden, the company can establish branches in other countries and regions with lower income tax rates, making it should The profits of companies in high income tax areas can be effectively transferred, so that the total income tax payable by the company will be reduced, reducing the cost of taxation for the company. Companies can use commercial discounts when carrying out sales activities to reduce the value-added tax burden that companies should pay. After the enterprise reformed its tax planning, the value-added tax rate changed from the original business tax rate of 5% to 6%. This research is helpful to the reasonable planning of corporate taxation.

Challenges of Kosovo Micro Businesses

The challenges that micro-businesses face during the lending process are numerous. Loans are with high-interest rates. There is a lack of loans with low-interest rates that would stimulate the growth of local businesses. On the one hand, the local business faces various trade barriers such as export in the regional market and EU countries, although Kosovo is a signatory to the CEFTA agreement. On the other hand, there is a lack of institutional support, which not only does not support the stimulation of exports but also within Kosovo makes the local business non-competitive about importers of goods. Interest rates are reduced to 2-3% on an annual basis. Increase the repayment period of loans (long-term loans) for capital investments. Allow the grace period at the beginning of the investment as well as have variable payments based on business income. Reduce bureaucracies when taking loans, reduce the demand for collateral by banks when taking loans. Reduce the business tax rate. Reduce unloyal competition and the informal economy that hurts local business. To stimulate start-up businesses, to support projects especially in the field of informatics. Start-up businesses are not so much supported by banks in Kosovo. Increase women's participation in business, through support, because they make up about 13% of businesses operating in Kosovo. It is intended that the participation of women in business will reach 50%. Make greater support of micro-businesses because these businesses can grow and develop and employ a large number of employees. Microbusinesses in Kosovo make up about 98% of enterprises in Kosovo. Establish a development bank that would support local business and create better facilities and conditions for foreign investors.

The revenue and base effects of local tax hikes: evidence from a quasi-experiment

Due to a reform of the local equalization scheme in 2003, a set of municipalities in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) increased their local property and business tax rates by one to two percentage points, while the remaining municipalities kept their rates constant. I use this variation across municipalities and over time to study the revenue and base effects of local property and business tax hikes in a generalized difference-in-differences design. The results suggest that the property tax hikes had even in the long-run a revenue elasticity of unity. Accordingly, I find no adverse effects on property tax bases. For the business tax, I find no significant effects on revenues and bases. Furthermore, there are also no effects on broader economic outcomes such as local employment, firms’ wage bill, and property prices. Overall, increasing local tax rates by one to two percentage points does not seem to affect the local economy adversely.

United States – Measures Affecting Trade in Large Civil Aircraft – Second Complaint – Recourse to Article 21.5 of the DSU by the European Union (US – Large Civil Aircraft (2nd Complaint) (Article 21.5 – EU)), DS353

This compliance proceeding under Article 21.5 of the Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU) concerned measures adopted by the United States to comply with the Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) recommendations and rulings in US–Large Civil Aircraft (2nd Complaint). The types of measures at issue that were found to have caused adverse effects to the European Union (EU, formerly European Communities) in the original Panel and Appellate Body proceedings were NASA aeronautics R&D instruments; United States Department of Defence (DOD) military research instruments (‘assistance instruments’); the business and occupancy (B&O) tax rate reduction in the State of Washington in relation to Boeing's production of the 787; property and sales tax abatements related to Industrial Revenue Bonds issued by the City of Wichita, Kansas; and the FSC/ETI subsidies.

Influence of Transaction Transfer Pricing Policies on Corporate Organizations Tax in Nigeria

This study aimed to discuss the influence of transaction transfer pricing on corporate organizations tax in Nigeria. A descriptive research model was adopted. Secondary data were obtained from KPMG International (Tax) Bulletin report on fifty (50) major corporate organizations in Nigeria for 2014 to 2018 concerning transaction transfer pricing policies in terms of its influence on the organizations' business growths, tax rate, profit rate and tax liability. Results obtained for the study showed that transaction transfer pricing policies have a positive influence on the business growth on corporate organizations in Nigeria. It was recommended that corporate organizations should employ adequate measure that safeguards and avoid costly error in the implementation of transaction transfer pricing policies. Keywords: corporate organizations tax, transfer pricing, transfer pricing policies. DOI: 10.7176/RJFA/11-6-07 Publication date: March 31 st 2020

Local fiscal policies and their impact on the number and spatial distribution of new firms

We examine the effect of local business taxation and local public good and service (PIGS) provision on the number and spatial distribution of new firms. Testing ground is Germany and we rely on the universe of firm foundations between 1998 and 2006. Methodologically, we estimate fixed effects poisson models coupled with a control function approach. The results suggest that a 1%-decrease in the business tax rate (the PIGS capital stock) raises (lowers) the number of new firms in the policy-changing jurisdiction by 4.6% (0.8%). Business tax reductions, moreover, strongly reduce the number of firm foundations in neighboring municipalities, implying that the aggregate number of new firms remains unchanged; while PIGS provision, on average, does not impact the number of firms in adjacent jurisdictions, negative effects emerge for subsets of PIGS and firms.

Fiscal interactions in the short and the long run: evidence from German reunification

AbstractThis paper uses the quasi-experiment of Germany’s reunification to test for strategic interactions in local taxation. After reunification, East-German municipalities were allowed to choose, for the first time in decades, local business and property tax rates. I explore whether the tax rates they chose were influenced by the tax rates in adjacent West-German municipalities. The results show that East-German municipalities mimicked the business tax rates of their western neighbors immediately after reunification, but not in later years. I find no evidence for interactions in property tax rates. These results are broadly consistent with models of social learning in fiscal policy.

Local fiscal policies and their impact on the number and spatial distribution of new firms

We examine the effect of local business taxation and local public good and service (PIGS) provision on the number and spatial distribution of new firms. The analysis draws on panel data for the universe of rm foundations in German municipalities, matched to municipalities' local business tax rates and the level and structure of their local PIGS provision. Methodologically, we estimate fixed effects poisson models coupled with a control function approach. The results suggest that local business taxation (PIGS provision) has a strong negative (positive) impact on the number of new firms in the policy-changing jurisdiction. Local business taxes are, moreover, found to exert beggar-thy-neighbor externalities on neigboring jurisdictions: tax reductions strongly lower the number of neighbors' rm foundations, implying that the aggregate number of new firms remains unchanged; while PIGS provision, on average, exerts no significant impact on the number of firms in adjacent jurisdictions, negative effects emerge for subsets of PIGS and firms.

The Tax-rate Elasticity of Local Business Profits

AbstractLocal business profits respond to local business tax (LBT) rates that vary across municipalities. We estimate that a 1% increase in the LBT rate decreases the LBT base by 0.45%, based on the universe of German LBT return files, which include corporations and unincorporated businesses. However, the fiscal equalization scheme largely compensates municipalities for the loss in the LBT base when they increase the LBT rate. Our estimates suggest that using tax revenue data instead of tax return data, as commonly done in the literature, results in a significant bias of the elasticity away from zero.

Road tax interactions among local governments: a spatial panel data analysis of the French case over the period 1984–2000

ABSTRACTThis article contributes to the literature on local tax interactions. Its novelty lies in its focus on the interactions of local governments via an indirect local tax on vehicles such as the road tax sticker and its analysis of interactions between direct and indirect local taxation. The main purpose of this article is to provide an empirical analysis of the reaction of road tax policy in a given French ‘department’ to changes in road tax policy in other ‘departments’. The analysis uses a novel panel data set covering the 96 French metropolitan ‘departments’ for the period from 1984 to 2000. First, the results confirm the presence of significant spatial interactions between French ‘departments’ due to the road tax sticker. Second, the estimation results also show that the business tax rate and/or the property tax rate on developed land are complements to the road tax sticker, whereas the residence tax rate and/or the property tax rate on undeveloped land are substitutes to the road tax instrument. Finally, I find that ‘departments’ with a larger, younger and older population set higher rates for the road tax sticker. The results are robust regarding alternative weight matrices.

Tax Reform Process Failures, Loopholes and Wealth Windfalls

This paper argues that the rushed legislative consideration of tax reform proposals without adequate time to review and analyze bill text has left open unintended loopholes. The paper identifies a loophole that would benefit multinationals in the proposals’ “repatriation holiday” provisions that if not fixed could result in large revenue losses. This loophole is illustrative of the pervasive failure in the proposals to incorporate guardrails around substantial rate reductions that would effectively police the many new boundaries between rate differences that the bill creates. Loopholes like that described in this paper are a sideshow compared to the proposals’ wealth windfall to the already wealthy from business tax rate reductions, but, incredibly, they would enhance it. Short-term political exigencies are not an excuse to adopt legislation that affords tax avoidance opportunities that will yield unintended revenue losses and undermine taxpayer faith in the tax system and their national government. Congress should slow down, hold hearings, collect comments and consider them, rather than plunging ahead with misguided legislation.

The Potential Distributive Effects of the Proposed Destination Based Cash Flow Tax (DBCFT)

The House GOP Blueprint for tax reform is the most ambitious corporate tax reform since the 1930s. It cuts business tax rates and allows immediate expensing of capital outlays. It accomplishes these goals by replacing the current corporate income tax which taxes profits to a destination based cash flow tax that taxes cash flow. The tax is a move from origin or production based to destination or consumption based. As Alan Auerbach said rather than figuring out “how do you measure income...with cash flow you just follow the money.” The cash flow tax is designed to accomplish a couple big goals. First, stop the gaming done by companies like Facebook to reduce their corporate tax burden. Second, encourage equity investment over borrowing. Finally, encourage exports while increasing the tax burden on imports. To put it mildly, the plan has caused quite a reaction. This essay considers the GOP proposals under the lens of whether the new corporate tax will disproportionately harm the lower boundaries. The new corporate income tax is being marketed as more progressive than the current corporate income tax because it will shift the tax from normal returns to supernormal returns, in other words from labor to capital. Since capital tends to be the wealthy; the tax will redistribute from the rich to the poor. In order to examine the progressivity of the proposal, I first discuss the proper comparative baseline for determining progressivity. Since the proposed tax, at first blush, appears to increase the deficit, the primary question is can the current structure ever be progressive. By cutting other social programs or raising the deficit to pay for the tax is not progressive. Then, assuming that the tax could be neutral in costs because rates can change, the essay concludes that the proposed corporate tax still fails short of being considered progressive. The distortions that continue to exist cause too much uncertainty that the distributive effects would benefit anyone but the owners of capital.

Heterogeneity in Tax Rate Elasticities of Capital: Evidence from Local Business Tax Reforms

This study examines heterogeneity in tax rate elasticities of corporate capital using staggered variation in local business tax rates of German municipalities. The results suggest an average long-run capital decline of 0.97% after a 1% increase in the tax rate. In line with prior literature that suggests higher investment-cash flow sensitivities of firms with financing constraints tax rate elasticities are up to half times larger for financially constrained firms than for unconstrained firms. Moreover, capital responses are about half times larger for firms with fewer tax avoidance possibilities. Finally, this study contributes to the literature on tax incidence. I find a weaker relation between taxes and capital for firms that are less likely to bear the economic burden of the tax because they shift the tax incidence to their stakeholders.

The effects of agglomeration on tax competition: evidence from a two-regime spatial panel model on French data

This article studies how agglomeration economies affect tax competition between local jurisdictions. We develop a theoretical model with two main testable predictions: in a setting where agglomeration forces lessen the responsiveness of capital to tax, high-regime agglomeration jurisdictions should adopt a rent-taxing behavior, and they should react less to their neighbors’ tax policies. The panel dataset spans the period from 1995 to 2007 and focuses on the local business taxes set at the French mid-subnational jurisdiction level of departements. First, instrumental variables estimates indicate that attractive jurisdictions capture a significant part of firms’ agglomeration rent by levying higher tax rates. An increase by 1% of the localization economies indicator (a specialization index) leads to increasing the business tax rate by 0.43%. Second, local tax setting behaviors are characterized by a mimetic behavior, with best response functions that slope upwards. We propose a two-agglomeration-regime spatial lag model to estimate through ML the relationship between tax competition and attractiveness. Our main result shows that both are linked and tax mimicry is less pronounced if a jurisdiction is agglomerated. Specifically, in response to a decrease in the tax rate of neighboring local governments by 1%, local governments with strong agglomeration economies reduce their tax rate by 0.4% against 0.6% for local government characterized by a low-agglomeration regime. We show that the classical one-size-fits-all-case of a single regime of agglomeration suffers from a 40% downward bias for low-agglomeration jurisdictions. We draw the link to policy praxis by discussing the optimal design of equalization schemes.

Empirical Evidence on the Impact of City Taxes

An important issue is whether cities can influence their own economic growths through municipal-level tax policy. There is little evidence on this to date, nor is there a clear a priori answer to this question. This study first documents municipal business tax rates across the United States, and finds they are a relatively significant cost to business. Next, using very a unique and precise government data set, the study examines the economic impacts of two previous tax cuts in Los Angeles and finds that these cuts generally resulted in growth in both the number of jobs and establishments.

Local taxes and political influence: evidence from locally dominant firms in German municipalities

We analyze the impact of locally dominant firms—i.e. firms that contribute a sizeable share to municipalities’ revenues—on local business tax rates. We argue that these firms have considerable political power locally even if they are not large in the regional or national perspective. These locally dominant firms can use their political power to voice their concerns directly vis-a-vis the local government—a channel of influence that is hardly available in municipalities with an atomistic structure of tax payers. We hypothesize that municipalities with locally dominant firms will set lower tax rates than municipalities in which tax-payers’ concentration is low. We test the impact of tax-payers’ concentration on local business tax rates using data from 423 municipalities in the German state Hesse between 1998 and 2005. The estimation technique accounts for spatial lags and autoregressive disturbances. Results support our central hypothesis: the higher the tax-payers’ concentration, the lower the municipal business tax rates.

How to stop the race to the bottom

Standard tax multipliers are a widespread feature of fiscal equalization systems. A simple theoretical model shows that actual tax multipliers respond positively to changes in standard tax multipliers. This theoretical prediction is tested empirically using data on municipalities in Germany. A quasi-experiment in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia is exploited to identify the incentive effect. The empirical results confirm that local business tax policy is shaped by standard tax multipliers. They provide a straightforward practical tool to avoid a race to the bottom in local business tax rates.

Yardstick competition and partial coordination: Exploring the empirical distribution of local business tax rates

This paper explores a striking form of tax policy interdependence that can be observed in the German federation. Though municipalities enjoy discretion in setting the local business tax rate, large fractions of municipalities – in some states even the majority – set identical tax rates. Our analysis shows that this tax-rate “bunching” is not the result of federal or state-level institutions. Possible explanations rest on partial coordination and yardstick competition. The role of the former is exemplified by the finding that small jurisdictions and jurisdictions sharing the same county are more likely to engage in “bunching”. Yardstick competition seems also relevant since jurisdictions for which strategic tax-setting should be associated with larger gains and lower cost are in fact more likely to set identical tax rates.

Tax Mimicking in the Short- and the Long-Run: Evidence from German Reunification

This paper uses the quasi-experiment of Germany’s reunification to identify local tax mimicking by municipalities in Eastern-Germany. After reunification, East-German municipalities were allowed to independently set, for the first time in decades, local business and property tax rates. I explore whether the tax rates chosen by East-German border municipalities were influenced by the tax rates of adjacent West-German municipalities. To obtain causal estimates, I rely on instrumental variables regressions within the spatial lag framework, using West-German border municipalities’ tax rates in 1989 as instruments for their post-reunification tax rates. The results suggest that East-German municipalities mimicked business tax rates immediately after reunification, but not in later years. I find no evidence of mimicking for property taxes. These results indicate that mimicking is not an important determinant of local tax policy.