International Percussions of Direct Taxes

This peper anlyzes the impact of tax competition between two countries of un- equal per-capita capital endownments on tax rates and efficiency when distorting wage, residence-based and source-based capital taxes (or any combination of two instruments) are available for governments. The national welfare costs and benefits of tax rate varia- tions are shown to be ambiguous in the asymmetric Nash equilibrium due to the existence of tax base and terms of trade effects. Moreover, numerical simulation results indicate that non-cooperative equilibria in Nash strategies are inefficient from an international perspective, even if residence-based capital taxes are in the set of tax instruments available to fiscal authorities.