The paper presents data on the taxation of business income in the Federal Republic of Germany in the nineties. The government's plan to reform the System of taxing corporate and personal income is portrayed and assessed. It turns out that the reform proposal has numerous disadvantages; it is...

Johannes Becker und Joachim Englisch, Universität Münster, zeigen in ihrem Kommentar, dass die Steuerreformpläne von Donald Trump zu einer spürbaren Entlastung aller Steuerzahler, aber vor allem bei eigentümergeführten Unternehmen und Erben führen werden. Die Wachstumseffekte der Reform...

The stance of fiscal policy in Germany changed in the course of 1999. Government expenditures were cut, significant tax reductions are intended. Fiscal policy fosters the growth of the economy. However, the tax cuts are by far not as large as is often argued; the plan to reform profit taxation...

The Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) recently proposed an interest barrier to fight tax base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS). We use the introduction of such an interest deductibility restriction in Germany as a quasi-experiment and find significant corporate...

We consider three plans for shifting the tax on corporate income to the personal level to achieve a significant reduction in the corporate tax rate. One plan eliminates the corporate tax and taxes dividends and the annual change in the value of publicly traded financial assets at ordinary rates....

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...

This paper explores the taxation of corporations in the wider context of capital income taxation. The pros and cons of various income-based and cash-flow forms of corporation tax (CT) are discussed. The paper concludes that the dual income tax (DIT), which taxes all capital income at the...

The theoretical literature suggests that when taking tax effects into account, debt ought to be preferable to equity. However, there are no uniform predictions of the size of this tax benefit (tax shield) in comparison to an opposing increasing cost of debt (especially insolvency costs). The...

Tax effects on distribution policy have been at the center of debate in the theoretical and empirical literature for over half a century. Theoretically, there are two major schools of thought on the matter. The “traditional view” predicts an influence of taxation on firms' payouts, while the...

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...