Staff Discussion Notes showcase the latest policy-related analysis and research being developed by individual IMF staff and are published to elicit comment and to further debate. These papers are generally brief and written in nontechnical language, and so are aimed at a broad audience...

The structure of Japan's corporate income tax system is broadly in line with those of other G7 countries. However, relatively high marginal and average effective tax rates prompt the question of whether adjustments should be considered to meet the objectives of promoting growth, investment and...

This paper identifies tax factors in 21 developing countries that have an impact on foreign direct investment flows. It categorizes those factors into issues associated with tax coordination; tax rates and rate structures; and composition of the tax base. Recent actions by countries reveal no...

Investment-to-GDP ratios across the Caribbean tend to be relatively high. In many countries, these ratios have been trending higher since the mid-1990s, largely reflecting public investment and foreign direct investment. Private domestic investors have been less prominent. This may be one reason...

This paper assembles a new dataset on corporate income tax regimes in 50 emerging and developing economies over 1996-2007 and analyzes their impact on corporate tax revenues and domestic and foreign investment. It computes effective tax rates to take account of complicated special regimes, such...

This paper presents a model of a multinational firm's optimal debt policy that incorporates international taxation factors. The model yields the prediction that a multinational firm's indebtedness in a country depends on a weighted average of national tax rates and differences between national...

Global economic integration intensified tax competition and raised concerns about the resulting "race to the bottom", which could undermine public investment and social spending. The aim of this paper is to test predictions that (i) there is interdependence in CIT rate setting in Eastern Europe...

This paper analyzes the link between FDI, corporate taxation, and corporate tax revenues. We find strong evidence that FDI in (out) flows are affected by tax regimes in the host (home) countries and FDI flows in turn affect the corporate tax base. Simulations of European Union (EU) harmonization...

Motivated by the concern that corporate income tax (CIT) competition may have eroded the tax base, this paper calculates average effective tax rates to measure the impact of CIT competition, including the widespread use of tax holidays, on the tax base for 15 countries in the Caribbean. The...

This paper studies whether exchange controls, particularly on the capital account, affect the choice of corporate tax rates, using a panel of 21 OECD countries over the period 1983-99. It builds on existing literature by (1) using a unique dataset with several different measures of the corporate...