Double Bertrand tax competition: a fiscal game with governments acting as middlemen

In a common market with costless mobility of all factors regional governments can attract mobile firms by granting subsidies which they must finance out of wage taxes on mobile labour. Firms locate where subsidies are highest and workers settle where taxes are lowest, forcing government ‘in the splits’ (double Bertrand-type tax competition). Initially, there is unemployment in the economy. Regional governments then behave like middlemen in the labour market, and the fiscal game takes the form of competition among strategic intermediaries. Results from the theory of intermediation are applied to this framework. It is shown that government size may increase rather than decline in a fiscal competition, that industrial clustering may emerge from tax competition, and that tax competition may alleviate the unemployment problem.     

A theory of interregional tax competition

A general equilibrium model is constructed to study tax competition, where local governments compete for capital by holding down property tax rates and public expenditure levels. An exact definition of tax competition is provided, and both the existence and nonexistence of tax competition are shown to be theoretically possible. It is argued, however, that tax competition must occur under empirically reasonable conditions. Inefficiency in public production is also explicitly modeled. The amount of capital used to produce a given level of public service output is shown to be greater than that which is required to minimize costs evaluated at the prices facing private firms.     

Tax Competition with Heterogeneous Firms

Abstract

This paper studies tax competition in an economic geography model that allows for agglomeration economies with trade costs and heterogeneous firms. We find that the Nash equilibrium involves a large country charging a higher tax than a small nation. Lower trade costs lead to an intensification of competition, a drop in Nash tax rates and a narrowing of the gap. Since large, productive firms are naturally more sensitive to tax differences in our model, large firms are the crux of tax competition in our model. This also means that tax competition has consequences for the average productivity of big and small nations' industries; by lowering tax rates, a small nation can attract high-productivity firms.     

HARMFUL TAX COMPETITION?

European governments are currently engaged in an assault on tax havens, to stamp out what they call 'unfair tax competition.' This article examines and rejects the arguments they use to justify this action and shows that tax competition is (like all forms of competition) beneficial, except perhaps as practised by European governments themselves.     

Firm-level determinants of tax evasion in transition economies

Business tax evasion is an important issue for governments. Yet the factors that determine business tax evasion have not been sufficiently examined in the literature in general, and in transition contexts in particular. To address this gap, this study uses the WB/EBRD Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey (BEEPS) database with a sample of over 12,692 firms from 26 transition economies. Applying various modelling strategies, we argue that tax evasion is a function of firm-level and institutional-level variables. We contribute to the literature by providing robust evidence showing that the perceived tax burden has a positive impact on tax evasion. We also find that the tax evasive behaviour of firms is positively influenced by low trust in government and in the judicial system as well as by higher perceptions of corruption and higher compliance costs. We find that smaller firms, individual businesses and firms in sectors that are less visible to the tax administration are more likely to get involved in evasive behaviour. Overall, institutional factors play an important role in determining firms’ tax evasion behaviour in transition economies. This finding has important policy implications.     

中国横向税收竞争如何影响雾霾污染——基于环保支出中介效应的研究

分税制改革以来,省级政府间税收竞争激化带来的环境污染问题正在逐步凸现。在此背景下,首先从理论层面分析了税收竞争、环保支出及雾霾污染的关系,并提出假说;其次建立空间杜宾模型测度了税收竞争对雾霾污染的直接效应、间接效应和总效应,并利用中介效应方法实证检验了税收竞争通过环保支出对雾霾污染的作用路径。研究结果表明,税收竞争显著加剧了本地区雾霾污染,但是其间接效应和总效应并不显著;此外,环保支出是税收竞争影响雾霾污染的一个主要中介变量。     

Identifying strategic interactions in Swedish local income tax policies

This paper uses data on Swedish local governments to test for strategic interaction in local tax setting. We make use of a number of indirect predictions from the theories of tax competition and yardstick competition in order to test for the presence of strategic interaction in these forms. Using such additional predictions of the theories serves a twofold purpose—first it helps us establish if the spatial coefficient is due to strategic interactions or merely reflecting spatial error correlation, and second, it helps identify the source of interaction. The analysis provides strong evidence for spatial correlation in tax rates among Swedish local governments. Moreover, we find weak evidence of tax competition effects in the setting of tax rates.     

The China effect: Evidence from data at firm level in Thailand

This study investigates how competition with Chinese imports affects firms in Thailand. Using World Bank data on Thailand and United Nations trade data from 2003 to 2006, the empirical results show that there is no significant impact of Chinese import competition on employment, wages, or labor income share. However, further checks show that for firms with lower productivity, the impact on employment and labor income share is more likely to be negative. The impact of Chinese import competition on profit margins is significantly positive. Considering the impact on labor income share and profit margins, we conclude that because of Chinese import competition, income distribution possibly goes in disfavor of labor. Our study shows that the impact of Chinese import competition on the skilled labor ratio is positive and significant. This result suggests that Thai firms are on the path to skill upgrading as a result of Chinese import competition, which is helpful for Thailand’s long-run economic growth. As firms with low productivity are more likely to be negatively affected by Chinese import competition, improving productivity is still an efficient way to counter such competition.     

Tax competition,uniform assessment,and the benefit principle

In previous discussions it has been argued that tax competition between local governments results in a tax burden on business that is less than the cost of public services for business and in suboptimal levels of public expenditures for residents. However, this conclusion has never been substantiated by a full theoretical treatment. Here a theoretical model of tax competition is developed between metropolitan areas, with labor perfectly immobile and two local public goods, one for residents and one for business. For “plausible” parameter values, numerical solutions of the optimality conditions are computed by means of a nonlinear programming algorithm.     

Mobile Labor, Multiple Tax Instruments, and Tax Competition

The tax competition literature shows that local governments keep property tax rates inefficiently low to prevent capital outflows, thereby underproviding local public goods. This paper adds mobile labor and an alternative tax instrument to the model. Jurisdictions have access to a property tax levied on land and capital, plus either a head tax or a labor tax. Scale economies in public good provision create incentives to use the property tax, but these incentives are not accompanied by increased incentives to underprovide public goods. In contrast, underprovision is associated with the use of a distortionary labor tax.     

Are Corporate Tax Reductions Real Benefits under Imputation Systems?

Imputation systems integrate corporate and shareholder personal income taxes to alleviate double taxation of dividend income. In this study, we empirically examine whether a corporate tax rate reduction under an imputation tax system benefits shareholders. Using Taiwan as a setting, our analyses indicate that decreasing the corporate tax rate is associated with an increase in dividend payout ratio and foreign investment. Moreover, the increase in dividend payout ratio is even greater for firms that have a higher increase in foreign ownership. Additionally, the market reacts positively to an announcement of a tax rate reduction; specifically, positive stock price reactions are stronger for firms that experienced a greater increase in foreign ownership in response to the tax rate reduction, for firms with greater liquidity constraints and more growth opportunities before the tax rate reduction, and for firms with a bigger decrease in effective tax rates after the tax rate reduction. Overall, we provide evidence that a tax rate reduction is associated with economic impacts and that foreign shareholders appear to be the main beneficiaries of a tax rate reduction under an imputation tax system.     

政府竞争:行政区经济运行中的地方政府行为分析

从政府竞争的角度,为行政区经济形成构建了一个政府行为分析框架.通过对政府竞争和博弈三个层面的考察,揭示区域经济发展中的各层级政府间互动关系,对行政区经济形成的深层次原因提供较为系统的解释.     

财税政策影响产业升级的理论机制分析——基于地方政府竞争视角

财税政策通过促进关键生产要素流入可促进产业升级。通过构建动态模型分析地方政府财税竞争对要素流动、社会福利及产业升级的影响。研究发现,提高生产要素的税率不仅会导致该生产要素外流,还会导致其他生产要素外流;在税率变化冲击下,要素存量调整至新的均衡状态与生产函数凹性和调整成本函数凸性有关;对发达地区落后产业实行高综合税率以及新兴产业实行低综合税率会促进地区产业升级,对落后地区实行低综合税率会促进地区经济发展和产业升级;政府的财税协调有利于地区间实现产业升级和提高社会福利水平;地区居民对企业的持股份额会影响地区福利水平。     

Do governments tax agglomeration rents?

Empirical evidence suggests that firms receive rents from locating in economic agglomerations and industry clusters. Using the German local business tax as a testing ground, we empirically investigate whether these agglomeration rents are taxable for local governments. The analysis exploits a rich data source on the population of German plants to construct measures for the communities’ agglomeration characteristics. The findings indicate that economic agglomerations and industry clusters exert a positive impact on the jurisdictional tax rate choice. Further analysis moreover suggests that a municipality’s potential to tax agglomeration rents depends on its firm and industry agglomeration relative to neighboring communities. To account for potential endogeneity problems, our analysis exploits long-lagged population and infrastructure variables as instruments for the agglomeration measures.     

INTERNATIONAL TAX COMPETITION AND DOUBLE TAXATION

This paper examines international tax competition, with respect to both corporate income tax rates and tax rules for double taxation. Unlike existing studies, this study assumes that governments set non-discriminatory tax rates on domestic- and foreign-sourced corporate income and can choose no tax allowance as the tax rule. Consequently, the Nash equilibrium outcomes contradict the intuition underlying previous studies: no tax allowance is chosen as the tax rule where world economic welfare can be maximized. A capital-exporting country gains whereas a capital-importing country loses, compared to the case where there is a tax allowance of any kind.     

Is it tax competition or tax exporting?

This paper extends the basic tax-competition model to a framework in which jurisdictions have market power over the price of the output produced within their borders. If firms within the jurisdiction are competitive, the jurisdiction can play the role of monopoly-rent collector by using taxes to restrict the level of output. It is shown that the basic tax competition model can be thought of as a special case of this more general framework. In this framework, the opportunity to export the tax burden can partially or fully offset the well-known effects identified by the tax competition model.     

Lowering the Marginal Corporate Tax Rate: Why the Debate?

In an effort to attract new investors and retain existing producers, governments use corporate tax rates as a policy tool for industrial recruitment, resulting in inter‐state tax competition. Foreign direct investment (FDI) growth and GDP growth are the two policy outcomes gauged in inter‐state tax competition. The assumption is that lower corporate taxes lead to increases in FDI, which results in capital formation that generates GDP growth. This 60‐nation panel study tests that assumption through examining economic indicators contingent on taxation, such as FDI and mergers and acquisitions among multinational corporations between 1999 and 2009. The results suggest that reduced corporate tax rates can increase FDI but decrease annual GDP growth. The main policy implication is that tax competition may attract investment, but may not promote overall economic growth, offering support for value‐extraction theories.     

The Role of Symmetry between the Revenue and the Expenditure Side of the Government Budget in the Debate about the Potential Negative Effects of Tax Competition

The effects of capital tax competition are reconsidered in this paper incorporating the argument that the expenditure structure of public budget should reflect its revenue structure. The paper offers a small open economy model where capital and labour tax revenues are used exclusively on the provision of public inputs. It is shown that if the revenue side of the government budget exactly matches the expenditure side that is if industrial public goods are financed by both private production factors with the weights reflecting the contributions of public inputs to the private factor productivity then public inputs are provided optimally even in the presence of tax competition.     

Managing Discretionary Accruals and Book‐Tax Differences in Anticipation of Tax Rate Increases: Evidence from China

This paper investigates how firms manage their earnings to trade off various incentives when tax rates increase. We hypothesize and find that firms generally choose to manage their taxable income upward in a book‐tax non‐conforming manner rather than in a book‐tax conforming manner before a tax rate increment, which in turn reduces the detection risk of aggressive financial reporting. These results suggest that firms give more weight to tax incentives and tax audit or regulatory inspection risks than to boosting financial reporting income in tax management. However, when firms have higher book management incentives or lower tunneling incentives (i.e., non‐state‐owned enterprises), we find that they manage their taxable income and book income upward together (i.e., in a book‐tax conforming manner), whereas their counterparts (i.e., state‐owned enterprises) do not. Overall, our paper contributes to the literature by demonstrating the interplay of tax, tunneling and financial reporting incentives in influencing tax management strategies. The findings from our paper should also help government and regulators understand more about firms’ reactions to tax rate increases.     

Is corporate payout taxation a long run phenomenon? Evidence from international data

This paper examines whether dividend and capital gains taxation influences corporate payout policy using the country level data of 21 countries in panel versions of time series models. We find that dividend relative to capital gains tax penalty is cointegrated with corporate payouts (dividends and share repurchases) i.e. corporate payout taxation may be a long run phenomenon. Further, the cointegrating vector estimates are largely consistent with the traditional view of dividend taxation whereby the tax penalty discourages dividends, while the estimates give limited support to the premise that firms substitute dividends for share repurchases in response to an increase in dividend tax penalty. Long run causality also operates between the tax penalty and payouts in the error correction models. Additionally, dividend tax appears to be more influential than capital gains tax on dividend payout decisions. Lastly, taxation affects dividends more significantly in countries with high investor protection.