Taxing capital gains is an important obstacle to the efficient allocation of resources because it imposes a transaction cost on the vendor which locks in appreciated assets by raising the vendor's reservation price in prospective transactions. For M&As, this effect has been intensively studied...

Repatriation taxes reduce the competitiveness of multinational firms from tax credit countries when bidding for targets in low tax countries. This comparative disadvantage with respect to bidders from exemption countries violates ownership neutrality, which results in production inefficiencies...