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...

This paper develops a new tax measure – the Tax Attractiveness Index – reflecting the attractiveness of a country's tax environment and the tax planning opportunities that are offered. Specifically, the Tax Attractiveness Index covers 16 different components of real-world tax systems, such...

This paper analyzes whether taxation has an influence on the location decisions of multinational enterprises. As a tax measure, we employ the Tax Attractiveness Index (see Keller and Schanz 2013). This index covers 18 different tax factors, such as the taxation of dividends and capital gains,...

Using a simple model under certainty we show the implications of the new group relief system in Austria effective from 2005 and the reform act of business taxation 2008 in Germany on cross border marginal purchase prices and marginal seller prices concerning incorporations. The results show that...

This paper analyzes the effects of the tax privilege for retained profits of partnerships and sole proprietorships. These privileges were implemented in Austria in 2004 and in Germany in 2008. The paper demonstrates that the German government's goal of increasing the equity in German...

This paper analyzes two typical effects of tax reforms, tax rate effects and timing effects. The example chosen for the analysis is the tax privilege for retained profits of partnerships and sole proprietorships, which was implemented in Germany in 2008. Taking equity-financing and top marginal...

This paper proposes the introduction of a consumption-based corporate income tax in the European Union. Our proposal would guarantee neutrality regarding investment decisions and at the same time increase cost- efficiency. The proposal is based on the S-base cash flow tax, where transactions...

In this paper we compare the taxation of capital income in Austria, Germany and Switzerland. Because of the three level taxation in Switzerland, Zug and Zurich are chosen as representative cantons and communities. First the national legal frameworks are described before the absolute tax payment...

In Switzerland, taxation on expenditure is advertised as optimal for wealthy individuals with non-Swiss nationality. Assuming an individual resident in Germany, we analyze if it is optimal for tax purposes to stay in the home country or to move to Switzerland considering variable capital income....

For decades, the German local business tax has been criticised by both economists and politicians. But none of the reform proposals has been realised until now. In this paper we analyse the existing local business tax as well as the most popular reform proposals. They include taxes on value...