Corporate tax levels have fallen substantially in Europe during the last decades. A broad literature has identified tax competition as one reason for this decline in corporate tax levels. However, none of these studies explicitly asks the question whether tax competition within regions is...

Corporate tax levels have fallen substantially in Europe during the last decades. There is a broad literature on tax competition which has been identified as one reason for the decline in corporate tax levels. However, none of these studies explicitly ask the question whether tax competition...

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has become an influential player in the field of direct taxation in the European Union in the past twenty years. However, it is unclear whether the ECJ's decisions actually increase tax neutrality and therefore contribute to the achievement of an internal...

A sizeable literature studies whether governments strategically interact with each other through policy-diffusion, learning, fiscal and yardstick competition. This paper asks whether, in the presence of direct democratic institutions, spatial interactions additionally result from voters' direct...

This report analyses tax incentives for SMEs in 20 EU countries and five non-EU countries between 2009-2013. Its findings and recommendations are based on a review of tax codes, modelling of tax burdens using two different models, a descriptive analysis of company financial ratios, and the...

The present paper analyzes expectations of German politicians about the German debt brake (Schuldenbremse), which became part of the German constitution in 2009. This fiscal rule requires the federal government and the German states to run a (cyclically adjusted) budget deficit of no more than...

Fiscal rules have become popular to limit deficits and high debt burdens in industrialized countries. A growing literature examines their impact based on aggregate fiscal performance. So far, no evidence exists on how fiscal rules influence deficit expectations of fiscal policy makers. In the...

[Objective] Every year ZEW Mannheim computes measures of corporate effective taxation in Europe based on the Devereux/Griffith methodology. The measures aim at comprehensively reflecting and consistently comparing the effective corporate tax levels in the different member states. For the...

[Introduction] The tax planning strategies of multinational corporations have been a key issue on the international policy agenda for some years now. Both the European Commission and the OECD are currently working on anti-avoidance measures to curb international profit shifting of multinational...

[Introduction] This 2016 report of the project TAXUD/2013/CC/120 presents estimates of the effective tax rates on investment in the EU member states, FYROM and Turkey as well as Norway, Switzerland, Canada, Japan and the United States. The work presented in this report updates for the year 2016...