This paper explores the economic implications of an allowance for corporate equity (ACE), a comprehensive business income tax (CBIT) and a combination of the two in the EU. We illustrate the key trade-offs in designing ACE and CBIT in the presence of tax distortions at various decision margins...

The tax reform 2004-05 includes tax cuts within income taxation (€ –2.2 billion) and corporate taxation (€ –1.1 billion) as well as increases of several excise taxes (€ +232 million). The changes in the income tax rate scale taking effect in 2005 will increase tax progression and...

This paper computes (marginal and average) forward-looking effective tax rates for a sample of more than 550,000 firms in and outside of Europe using Bureau van Dijk's ORBIS data-base. Comparing the firm-level effective tax rates with their country-level counterparts we arrive at two important...

Using a large international firm-level data set, we estimate separate effects of host and parent country taxation on the location decisions of multinational firms. Both types of taxation are estimated to have a negative impact on the location of new foreign subsidiaries. In fact, the impact of...

The European Commission currently prepares a proposal for a directive on the introduction of a Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base (CCCTB). This paper reviews the current state of the European Commission´s preparation of the CCCTB proposal and discusses the implications for efficiency and...

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...

This paper assesses the efficiency properties of recent corporation tax reform proposals of the European Union to introduce international loss consolidation and formula apportionment. We extend the effective tax rate methodology of Devereux and Griffith (1999) to allow for a potential loss and...

The European Commission proposes to replace the current system of taxing corporate income of separate accounting by a two-step 'consolidate and apportionment' procedure. This paper uses a large set of unconsolidated firm-level data to assess the likely impact on corporate tax revenues in each...

This paper argues that profit-shifting activities of multi-jurisdictional enterprises (MJE) are maintained under a tax system of consolidation and formula apportionment (FA). A theoretical model discusses how an MJE can exploit its impact on the definition of the consolidated group...

Against the background of increased globalisation statutory corporate tax rates have shown a clear downward trend over the last two decades. The sharp decline in these rates was accompanied by substantial tax base broadening and a comparable reduction in personal income tax rates only until the...