This paper develops and tests the hypothesis that accounting rules mitigate the effect of tax policy on firm investment decisions by obscuring the timing of tax payments. I model a firm that maximizes a discounted weighted average of after-tax cash flows and accounting profits. I estimate the...

This paper reviews what we know from economic theory and evidence about who bears the burden of the corporate income tax. Among the lessons from the recent literature are: 1. For a variety of reasons, shareholders may bear a certain portion of the corporate tax burden. In the short run, they may...

In a sample of over 27 million establishments of U.S. firms with activities in more than one state, we estimate the impact of state business taxation on business activity. Only firms organized as subchapter C corporations are subject to the corporate tax code, whereas the income of partnerships,...

By changing the relative gain to incorporation, corporate taxation can play an important role in a firm's choice of organizational form. General equilibrium models have shown that substantial shifting of organizational form in response to tax rates implies a large deadweight loss of taxation....

Past attempts to measure the impact of taxes on corporate debt policy have focused on larger firms. Given that the top statutory corporate tax rate has varied little in recent years, tax incentives vary among these firms, almost entirely due to current or prospective tax losses. Results are...

This year marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of Arnold Harberger's celebrated model of the corporation income tax. While the model has been enormously useful as an analytical device for studying two sector economies, its usefulness for understanding the incidence and excess burden of the...

The empirical literature that seeks to measure the effective tax rate on new investment offers a striking paradox. On the one hand, summary measures of the effective tax rate on new investment are normally quite high. On the other hand, the amount of revenue actually collected from taxing...

Income from corporate and noncorporate firms is treated very differently under the tax law. To what degree do firms change their form of organization in response? Since the relative tax treatment depends on the tax bracket of the investor, the answer will vary by the bracket of the owners. To...

To study the effects of 'double taxation' (first at the corporation level, then at the shareholder level this paper analyzes a model with a tax on all corporate distributions to equity owners and no other taxes. Contrary to the common view, the tax is shown to have no substitution effect and, in...

This paper analyzes the implications of alterative risk assumptions for estimates of the distorting effects of the corporate tax in Canada. These distortions are decomposed into three broad categories: inter-asset distortions; inter-industry distortions; and inter-temporal distortions. Estimates...