We study the optimal combination of corporate tax rate and tax base in a model of a small open economy with heterogeneous firms. We show that it is optimal for the small country's government to effectively subsidize capital inputs by granting a tax allowance in excess of the true costs of...

This paper proposes and evaluates alternative methods for addressing the tax treatment of interest expenses in a multijurisdictional setting. The differential deductibility of debt entailed by various current tax law provisions leads to potential distortions in the patterns of asset ownership...

The existing theoretical literature on fiscal competition has to a large extent ignored the role of government debt as a determinant of taxes and productive public spending. We develop a simple model of fiscal competition with government borrowing. If a default on government debt is no option,...

The European Commission favours the introduction of a consolidated corporate tax base to overcome the distortions arising from the existing system of separate accounting. The blueprints for consolidation are simulated with the applied general equilibrium model CORTAX. We show that the benefits...

We study the optimal combination of corporate tax rate and tax base in a model of a small open economy with heterogeneous firms. We show that it is optimal for the small country's government to effectively subsidize capital inputs by granting a tax allowance in excess of the true costs of...

Since its conception, some within the European Union have expressed concerns over the ability of multinationals to avoid taxation by undertaking transfer pricing to shift profits towards low tax locations. These concerns have been growing, leading to a renewed call for a common consolidated...

Heterogeneous firm productivity seems to provide an argument for governments to pursue 'pick-the-winner' strategies by subsidizing highly productive firms more, or taxing them less, than their less productive counterparts. We appraise this argument by studying the optimal choice of effective tax...

The study analyses the incentives for multinationals caused by linking different national tax systems. The dividend tax capitalization hypothesis is extended to include taxes during the repatriation and onward distribution (as equalization tax) to derive the relevant cost of capital formulae for...

The implications of high indebtedness for strategic tax setting in internationally integrated capital markets have found little attention so far. We analyze when and how changes in initial debt levels affect the distribution of economic activity across space. When public borrowing is...

The present paper studies among other issues the effects on equity and efficiency of two classic principles of international capital taxation: the principle of residence and the principle of source. In addition, it discusses harmonization and tax competition policies in corporate taxation,...