In the field of mergers and acquisitions, German and international tax law allow for several opportunities to step up a firm's assets, i.e., to reevaluate the assets at fair market values. When a step-up is performed the taxpayer recognizes a taxable gain, but also obtains tax benefits in the...

This paper investigates the presence of framing effects and loss aversion in tax reporting behavior of wage earners using a balanced panel of German income tax return data. Reference dependence and loss aversion suggest that individuals in a perceived loss situation attribute higher value to a...