As VAT becomes an increasingly important source of tax revenue world-wide, tax policy makers should be well aware of its strengths and weaknesses. In academia, there is strong consensus that tax exemptions rank among the most problematic features of VAT. The very concept of exemption is already...

Taxation inevitably gives rise to tax planning. In the era of globalization, multinationals in particular may not only try to exploit options, inconsistencies and gaps in domestic tax legislation, but they will also (re-)organize their business so as to make an optimal use of international tax...

In this short paper, we review the criticism of the standard view (the ’old view’) of foreign profit taxation which goes back to Peggy Musgrave (née Richman, 1963). This ?new view of international taxation is based on recent empirical studies and favours a system where foreign profits are...

A recent empirical literature has arisen documenting the response of one nation?s policy choices, including tax, environmental, and labour policies, to that of others. This has been largely interpreted as evidence of competition, be it for mobile resources (like FDI, taxable book income etc.) or...

Advance pricing agreements (APAs) determine transfer prices for intrafi?rm transactions in advance. This paper interprets these contracts as a means to overcome a hold-up problem that occurs because governments cannot commit to non-excessive future tax rates. In addition, with private...

We present a new model of tax-induced transfer pricing as an alternative to the oft-used concealment model. Inspired by interviews with practitioners, we consider a large multinational ?firm which is audited by the tax authority in the high-tax location. When this country adjusts the transfer...

An increase in the taxation of foreign a¢ liates reduces domestic investment, as has recently been empirically shown in Becker and Riedel (2012). This paper investigates the implication of this ?nding for tax competition. It is shown that an increase in the number of multinational ?rms (in...

We analyse the role of business taxation for corporate risk-taking under different accounting principles. We build a model in which investors have complete information and markets are perfect. A representative risk-neutral firm invests in one unit of an asset choosing from a continuum of assets...

This note provides a novel argument why countries may have incentives to allow for some profit shifting to low-tax jurisdictions. The reason is that a tightening of transfer pricing policies by high tax countries leads to more agressive tax rate competition by low tax countries.

This paper measures the relative importance of quality and quantity effects of corporate taxation on foreign direct investment. Quantity is affected if corporate taxes reduce the equilibrium stock of foreign capital in a given country. Quality effects arise if taxes decrease the extent to which...