International Tax and Public Finance最新文献

This paper presents first-round simulations of the tax revenues arising from the Pillar One Amount A proposal of the G20/OECD inclusive framework on base erosion and profit shifting for 2016–2025. Amount A aims at revising taxing rights on multinational enterprises with at least €20 billion in revenue and profitability above 10%. We consider the latest available Pillar One Amount A rules as detailed in the “Multilateral Convention to Implement Amount A of Pillar One” (OECD 2023b). In a first step, we identify the multinationals that would be “covered” under Pillar One Amount A. Then, by combining micro and macro data sources, we create a database that approximates these Covered Groups’ worldwide distribution of destination-based revenues, profits, employees, and tangible assets. Destination-based revenues serve to reallocate Amount A profits across jurisdictions. Finally, we account for double taxation relief to obtain country-level net revenue estimates from Pillar One Amount A. The aggregate additional tax revenue arising from Pillar One Amount A varies from €5.7 billion in 2020 to €10.9 billion in 2022. We provide country-specific estimate ranges and a comparison to digital taxes. The trade-off between Amount A and digital taxes is unclear and may vary from one country to another. Testing for the implications of various provisions of Amount A rules, we observe that the extent of taxing rights redistribution is seriously affected by the Marketing and Distribution Safe Harbour (MDSH), while the profit reallocated to low and lower-middle-income jurisdictions crucially depends on the tail-end revenues provision.

A benefit tax is a tax whose amount is determined in accordance with the benefits received. It is well-known that an increase in the tax burden reduces individual welfare due to its negative effect on private consumption, but the public finance literature commonly disregards the positive effects that an increase in public goods provision (that follow the increase in taxes) can have on taxpayers’ welfare. This paper first considers an economy in which a proportional labor-income tax is used to finance the provision of (pure) public goods, and describes a “second-best benefit” tax solution to the tax-expenditure problem that is efficient and satisfies the benefit principle of taxation. The analogous “first-best benefit” tax solution can be obtained with the same procedure under lump-sum taxation. The tax burdens under these solutions are set individually to maximize each taxpayer’s surplus given the contributions of all taxpayers and no free riding. The solutions provide natural benchmarks to separate the problems of efficiency and redistribution.

This paper provides a brief and accessible guide to the Marginal Value of Public Funds (MVPF) and offers some new perspectives on its application to the evaluation of tax policy. Specifically, the paper aims to: (i) bridge the gap between traditional uses of the Marginal Cost of Public Funds and the growing interest in the MVPF approach, (ii) highlight the crucial link between the MVPF and tax policy, (iii) critically discuss empirical quantification, particularly with respect to tax elasticities, and (iv) explore distributional considerations and their connection to the literature on optimal redistributive taxation.

We analyze the reporting response to an ambitiously targeted government support scheme for Norwegian businesses at the very start of the Coronavirus crisis in 2020. Our empirical design is based on cross-checking self-reported data in the applications for support with administratively reported data used for VAT. We find strong evidence that strategic misreporting was present but conclude that its remaining quantitative extent after enforcement actions already taken by the tax authorities was relatively small. Firms tend to misreport 4% more often than expected, and the actual support paid out was 5% higher than it should have been. We discuss possible reasons for the relatively limited extent of non-compliance and more general lessons for the design of transfer programs.

The key question addressed in this work is whether financial distress recently experienced by several Italian municipalities can be at least partially imputed to the inadequacy of the financial resources they suffer compared to the needs of their populations and their territories. Starting from a multidimensional definition of financial distress, we investigate this issue by exploiting the variability across municipalities revealed by two different occurrences recently involving the intergovernmental fiscal relations in Italy: on the one hand, the large cuts in vertical transfers carried out by the central government as part of the fiscal consolidation strategy in the period 2014–2015 which affected single municipalities to varying degrees; and, on the other hand, the introduction of a new mechanism of equalization transfers at municipal level which showed how the gap between available financial resources to local needs is differentiated across municipalities. Exploiting these sources of variability across local authorities, the estimation results show that the Italian municipalities which suffer a level of resources lower than that necessary to provide public services at a standard level are, ceteris paribus, more likely to run into financial difficulties. By the same token, large cuts in central government transfers have a statistically significant effect on financial vulnerability at municipal level.

This paper examines the relationship between marital sorting and income inequality in Switzerland using individual tax data. We find that assortative mating intensifies at the tails of the income distribution. High and low earners specifically tend to marry alike. This pattern is exacerbating household income inequality—the Gini coefficient increases by more than 10% and the top 1% share by around 5% compared to random matching. By comparison, we show that the redistributive impact of marital sorting offsets the effect induced by taxation for most of the top income quintile. However, tax dominates the opposing mating redistribution from the top 5% income share.

Wealth surveys tend to underestimate wealth concentration at the top due to the “missing rich” problem. I propose a new way of improving the credibility of wealth surveys by making them consistent with tabulated income tax data. This is possible with the harmonized triannual Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS), which collects data on both income and wealth. I achieve consistency by calibrating survey weights using the income part of HFCS. I apply the calibration method of Blanchet et al. (J Econ Inequal 20(1):119–150, 2022b) in a new context and propose a new, intuitive way to determine the merging point where the calibration starts. I then use the calibrated weights with HFCS wealth values. Tested on Austria, calibration aligns the survey totals closer to the National Accounts, with wealth inequality increasing in the second and third survey waves. I also find a strong downward bias in the Austrian HFCS income distribution. Following the calibration, I test other top tail adjustments: replacing the survey top tail with a Pareto distribution and combining the data with a magazine rich list.

We propose a novel framework that revisits the seminal Chamley-Judd zero capital taxation result in light of bounded rationality stemming from a finite policy planning horizon and structural frictions in fiscal institutions. We show a mechanism that generates positive optimal capital taxation in the long run. Our numerical results indicate that the current tax system in the United States could be near-optimal in a constrained environment where policymakers exhibit limited policy planning horizons and imperfect altruism toward household welfare under subsequent governments.

We examine the relation between corporate social responsibility [CSR] and international profit shifting. We find consistent evidence that CSR is adversely related to profit shifting within European and US multinational firms. Additional results document that less profit shifting occurs in multinational firms that show high performance in the social or corporate governance dimensions. For US multinational firms, we find that the CSR performance is negatively related to profit shifting, particularly if a multinational firm faces fewer reputational concerns or competitive threats. Our findings point to a corporate culture in which, for international tax planning through profit shifting, CSR and tax payments complement each other.

This paper documents the effect on wages of one of the most far-reaching French economic reforms of the past decade. The reform, implemented between 2013 and 2018, provided a corporate tax credit proportional to the payroll for those employees paid no more than 2.5 times the French minimum legal wage. The aim of the reform was to increase competitiveness and employment by reducing labor costs through a corporate tax credit. It is shown here that a significant part of the tax credit paid to firms actually increased wages, missing the reform’s initial target. Insofar as almost all companies were affected by the reform, an innovative evaluation method is used here to simulate a counterfactual scenario for wages using branch data from France’s national accounts. This method successfully estimates the specific impact of the reform on wages and it is robust to several checks, such as placebo estimates. The present contribution to the literature is threefold. First, we propose a novel methodology of policy evaluation specially designed for the absence of a counterfactual. Second, and unlike most public policy evaluation studies, national accounts data are used instead of firm-data. Third, the partial equilibrium results presented in the article are particularly relevant for calibrating a macroeconomic model accounting for general equilibrium effects. Indeed, the reform amounted to a cut in corporate taxes equivalent to 1% of GDP, therefore constituting a sizable macroeconomic shock.