Corporate income taxes and entrepreneurship

Corporate Income Taxes , Financial Constraints and Innovation ∗

We examine exogenous changes in state corporate income taxes over the 1988-2006 period and find that tax decreases significantly boost both the quantity, measured by the number of patents, and the quality, measured by citations per patent, of innovative output, while tax increases have little impact on innovation. Most of the impact of tax changes on innovation occurs two or more years after th...

Exempting Corporate Dividends from Individual Income Taxes

As the centerpiece of its “growth package,” the Bush Administration proposes to eliminate taxes that individuals pay on dividend payments they receive from corporations. These dividends would receive tax-free treatment to the extent that they have been paid from profits subject to the corporate income tax. For individuals who hold shares in companies that do not pay dividends, the proposal woul...

Entrepreneurship and Corporate Governance

This paper explores the relationship between the theory of the firm and the theory of financial markets. I begin with Mises’s claim that the defining feature of an industrialized, market economy is the use of financial markets to allocate capital among firms and among industries. This presupposes a market for the ownership and control of productive assets. Unfortunately, the Austrian theory of ...

Corporate Taxes and Defined Benefit

The Tepper-Black arguments for tax-arbitrage opportunities from overfunding pension plans are critically examined and modifications proposed. Tax status, a function of current marginal tax rates and expected future taxable income, is predicted to determine funding policy. Tests of this modified tax benefits view suggest that 1) tax status declines are associated with pension contribution reduct...

Corporate taxes in Europe