This paper analyses the investment effects of the 2000 tax reform in Estonia. More precisely, it studies the impact of the shift from an imputation system to a system in which companies pay taxes only with respect to distributed profits. The paper uses Tobin’s q theory of investment and...

Despite enormous growth in international capital flows, capital-output ratios continue to exhibit substantial heterogeneity across countries. We explore the possibility that taxes, particularly corporate taxes, are a significant source of this heterogeneity. The evidence is mixed. Tax rates...

This paper re-examines the impact of consumption and capital income taxes on (a) the incentive to undertake risky investment and (b) the revenue generated from such taxes. It challenges a well-known claim in the literature that a capital income tax with full loss offset can leave incentives to...

We present new data on effective corporate income tax rates in 85 countries in 2004. The data come from a survey, conducted jointly with PricewaterhouseCoopers, of all taxes imposed on "the same" standardized mid-size domestic firm. In a cross-section of countries, our estimates of the effective...

We interpret the marginal welfare cost of capital income taxes as the present discounted value of consumption distortions. Such an asset market interpretation emphasizes the importance of the interest rate used to value future distortions, especially in the presence of uncertainty. We find that...

The taxation of private equity managers' share of funds' profits — the twenty percent “carried interest” — received much attention in academic literature and popular discourse. Much has been said and written about the fact that fund managers' profits are taxed at preferred rates. But...

This paper examines how business investment responds to investment tax credit, as enacted by Italy's Law 388/2000. To assess whether the programme made investments possible that otherwise would not have been made, it exploits some features of the tax credit scheme, such as the fact that some...

This paper shows that giving tax payments to firms suffering losses would decrease the volatility of the business cycle, reduce the tax biases against small firms and new ventures, mitigate distortions caused by capital market imperfections, and encourage risk taking. These tax credits would...