Governments use tax expenditures to boost investment, innovation and employment. However, these schemes are largely opaque, costly and often ineffective in reaching their stated goals. They also frequently trigger unwanted side effects. In order to improve the performance of these tools, the...

The multinationalization of corporate investment in recent years has given rise to a number of international tax avoidance schemes that may be eroding tax revenues in industrialized countries, but which may also reduce tax burdens on mobile capital and so facilitate investment. Both the welfare...

We examine both vertical and horizontal tax competition over time by studying the strategic response of county sales taxation to state sales taxes and to cross-border neighboring municipalities' combined (state and county) taxes. Using county and state sales tax data from 2003 through 2009, we...

Building on recent contributions to the New Economic Geography literature, this paper analyses the relation between asymmetric market size, trade integration and business income tax differentials across countries. First, relying on Ottaviano and Van Ypersele's (2005) foot-loose capital model of...

This paper tests the central predictions of the theoretical tax competition literature for capital tax rates for a panel of European Union countries, notably a race to the bottom in corporate tax burdens. In contrast to the previous empirical literature, empirical support for increasing capital...

The paper investigates the effect of asymmetric debt and debt servicing obligations on taxes and primary spending in a standard tax competition model, assuming public debts are pre-determined and in their steady state. The impact of increasing financial market integration and capital mobility on...

We study corporate income tax competition when firms operating in multiple jurisdictions can shift income using financial planning strategies. Several such strategies, particularly intra-corporate lending, appear to be actively pursued by companies to reduce subnational corporate taxes in...

This paper empirically examines whether expansion of the EU has increased international tax competition. To do so, we use a simple model of tax competition to determine how a given country weights the taxes of others when choosing its own tax. This indicates that the market potential of a...

We study the choice of club membership, when member-countries national governments set their tax policies non-cooperatively. Federal policy (in the form of club membership) has a higher constitutional status than national policies (in the form of income tax rates). This allows federal policy to...

In international business, competitiveness is the crux of success, which means every effort has to be made to reduce the cost of production and marketing. Every single penny saved matters a lot and adds to an exporter's global competitiveness. One such area that needs to be looked into is refund...