The terms “enterprise,” “business” and “business profits” are ubiquitous in U.S. and international tax law yet they are often ill-defined and under-theorized, especially in their interaction with other regulatory areas. This U.S. Report, commissioned for a comparative volume on the...

Americans have been inundated with financial scandals at large corporations during the past two years. In many cases, unethical behavior and poor oversight of corporate management are to blame. But a deeper look reveals that the flawed structure of the corporate income tax has been a key driver...

It comes as no surprise to any observant person in this country that there is a wide disparity in our federal income tax treatment of persons who have differing incomes and financial resources. But while much has been written on tax law complexity and inefficiency, little or nothing has been...

For over a century, politicians, government officials and scholars in the United States have debated whether corporate tax returns, which are currently subject to broad tax privacy protections, should be publicly accessible. The ongoing global discussion of base erosion and profit shifting by...

U.S. Effective marginal tax rates (EMTRs) for 2018 through 2027 are calculated for the TaxCuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). These EMTRs take account of the extension and subsequent phaseout of bonus depreciation with a methodology used by Cohen, Hansen, and Hassett (2002) toestimate the user cost of...

This paper reports OECD effective corporate tax rates for new investment for 2017. Under prior law, a high U.S. statutory corporate income tax rate meant that U.S. effective tax rates generally exceeded effective tax rates in other OECD and G-7 countries. To gauge the impact of tax reform on the...

We introduce the German Business Panel (GBP), a novel large-scale survey of German firms. The GBP periodically surveys executives and key decision-makers in a representative sample of German firms, taking stock of their perceptions, views, and expectations. A particular focus of the survey is on...

Future increases to the top income tax rates for individuals and reductions to the corporate tax rate will invite the widespread use of C corporations as tax shelter vehicles, an old problem that has never been addressed successfully. The changes could even resurrect the need for the...

The present study provides estimates of the Effective Marginal Tax Rates (EMTRs) for a sample of 17 OECD countries and 11 manufacturing sectors in a single framework encompassing capital, labour and energy taxes. Our cross-country/cross-sector approach allows us comparing the incentives provided...

Getting tax and transfer systems to efficiently deliver sufficient revenues to achieve macroeconomic targets, address goals in re-distribution and social welfare, encourage employment, accommodate business-competitiveness concerns and incorporate environmental issues is difficult. In Australia,...