This paper investigates the importance of political ideology and opportunism in the choice of the tax structure. In particular, we examine the effects of cabinet ideology and elections on the distribution of the tax burden across factors of production and consumption for 21 OECD countries over the period 1970-2000 by employing four alternative cabinet ideology measures and by using the methodol...

This paper investigates the effect of horizontal corporate group (keiretsu) affiliation on effective tax rates in Japan. After controlling for variables that affect corporate income taxes, keiretsu firms have lower effective tax rates than independent firms. These findings are attributed to political power and the unique corporate governance mechanism of keiretsu groups. Furthermore, horizontal...

This paper develops a positive theory of overlapping income taxation in a federation of states. Its main motivation comes from the observation that in the U.S. states income tax rates are significantly lower than the federal income tax rate. The analysis shows that in a federal system total productivity dispersion between the states determines the federal tax rate. In fact, there exists a posit...

This paper uses a finite mixture model to uncover heterogeneous income tax rate perceptions, establishing four new results. First, almost half of respondents do not distinguish between marginal and average tax rates. Second, roughly 30 percent of respondents know the statutory marginal tax rates schedule (and answer questions accordingly). Third, among respondents who think all income is taxed ...

The U.S. tax law taxes a multinational firm (MNF)’s global incomes at its home country tax rate. To avoid double taxation, it permits tax cross-crediting. Namely, the global firm can use excess foreign tax credits (FTCs) (the portion of foreign tax payments that exceed the home country tax liabilities) generated from a subsidiary located in a high-tax country to offset the tax liabilities of it...

The paper presents an econometric accounting of the e¤ective corporate tax rate in Australia for the years 1993 to 1996. The estimation is a panel of Australian …rms that uses a specially gathered …nancial data base. Using …xed and random e¤ects, the model speci…es that the statutory tax rate is estimated as the constant term of the model. An ability to …nd an estimated statutory tax rate that ...

The international tax landscape is changing and it is changing fast. The political perception is that taxation of multinational enterprises is not aligned with the ‘economic activity’ that produces their profits (i.e. not aligned with ‘value creation’). The perception links ‘value creation’ with ‘employees and sales’. In the BEPS Project of the OECD, the OECD attempts to combat base erosion and...