This paper analyses tax competition and tax coordination in a model where capital flows occur in the form of mergers and acquisitions, rather than greenfield investment. In this framework, we show that differences in residence based taxes do not necessarily distort international ownership...

The standard tax theory result that investment should not be distorted is based on the assumption that profits are locally bound. In this paper we analyze the optimal tax policy when firms are internationally mobile. We show that the optimal policy response to increasing firm mobility may be...

Forward looking measures like the well-known effective marginal tax rate developed by King and Fullerton (1984) are often criticized for not taking into account the complexity of the tax law. This paper derives a method of evaluating this kind of measure and of quantifying the bias resulting...

If conventional instruments of strategic trade policy are unavailable, the system of foreign profit taxation and transfer price guidelines may serve as surrogate policy instruments. In this paper, I consider a model where firms from two countries compete with each other on a third market. I...

Recent empirical studies find that foreign direct investment (FDI) by a multinational firm is not associated with a reduction of the firm's domestic activities. As it is often argued, this finding may imply that a country should not tax the firm's foreign profit income since this reduces foreign...

I consider a continuum of multinational enterprises (MNEs), which differ in profitability. MNEs employ capital, shift profit to tax havens and may relocate their production facilities to other countries. Source countries provide public inputs and levy taxes. I derive optimal policy choices for...

Many federal tax systems employ formula apportionment to allocate the taxable profits of large businesses to the federal subunits, where the subunits' specific tax rates are then applied. The formulas - such as the one recently proposed by the EU Commission and the one agreed upon by the...

We introduce transport cost of trade in products into the classical Zodrow and Mieszkowski (1986) model of capital tax competition. It turns out that even small levels of transport cost lead to a complete breakdown of the seminal result, the underprovision of public goods. Instead, there is a...

When a region successfully attracts a large firm by offering tax concessions, outright subsidies etc., the firm often commits itself to performance targets in terms of investment or employment. This paper interprets these contractually fixed targets as a consequence of incomplete information. It...