When governments analyze tax policies aimed at attracting investment, they typically rely on a variable called the marginal effective tax rate (METR) on capital. The METR is a measure of the effective tax burden on new business investment. Recent Ontario budgets have presented estimates of the...

Ontario’s revised plan for the tax treatment of new housing under a Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) is a significant improvement over its original proposal in the 2009 Budget, with lower economic cost and less impact on homebuyers’ decisions.

While Canadian federal and provincial governments have made progress in reducing the tax burden on business investment in recent years, the 2009 budget season also saw more counterproductive tax policies that favour certain industries and disadvantage others. In this Commentary, the authors...

Canadian governments are undercutting progress in reducing corporate income and capital taxes with counter-productive policies that impose unequal tax burdens across assets and industries. The study highlights priorities for improving the tax system by reducing taxes on capital investment and...

In the next decade the Russian tax system will face tremendous challenges, due to both objective factors (significant dependence of the Russian economy on foreign trade conjuncture, etc) and a number of decisions in the field of fiscal policy. Viewing these challenges the authors examine three...

During the transformation process, the reform of public finances (in particular the tax system) is crucial for Georgia. There are a lot of proposals and suggestions in the financial literature concerning the introduction of tax systems in transition countries. Individual taxes or the entire tax...

Because policymakers may consider the state of the economy when setting taxes, endogeneity bias can arise in regression models that estimate relationships between economic variables and taxes. This paper quantifies the policy endogeneity bias and estimates the impact of R&D tax incentives on R&D...

The paper summarizes the main weaknesses of Jordan’s current incentive program. Because of these weaknesses, Jordan’s long history of investment incentives has proven not to attract significant capital investment in areas favored by government. Instead, these measures have simply eroded the...

Provinces increasingly target favoured business sectors or activities for special tax treatment. Getting back on track to broad-based tax relief would make Canadians better off, without starving governments for tax revenue.

Over a decade ago, several Canadian provinces replaced their retail sales taxes by value-added taxes. This paper estimates the effects of this tax substitution on business investment in the reforming provinces. Consistent with theory, we find that the reform led to significant increases in...